Taxes for State and Local Government Itemized

Interesting record of where state and local governments get their funding. Most of us know taxes are a major player as to whether a community or state will survive as we write out the huge check at the end of the year.

What most of don't know is all the hidden taxes we pay everyday, like the gas tax. Read the list below and digest how this is only the beginning of the attack on wealth from the progressive socialists Democrats.

A good example is how will the federal government pay for the 1.3 trillion new dollars required to support ObamaCare with 30 million new recipients and millions more to come? A majority of the population voted for these new taxes which means they are ready to pay for them, right?

Welcome to the real world of socialism.

The Sources of State and Local Tax Revenues
February 4, 2013
Source: Elizabeth Malm and Elllen Kant, "The Sources of State and Local Tax Revenues," Tax Foundation, January 28, 2013.

State and local governments receive their income from a variety of sources, according to a new U.S. Census Bureau report that breaks down total revenue by the various taxes and fees assessed within a state during fiscal year 2010. Elizabeth Malm and Ellen Kant of the Tax Foundation review the Census Bureau report and dissect state and local income by property, sales and gross receipt, personal income and other taxes.

• In 2010, property taxes, including commercial and residential real estate taxes and personal property tax revenues, accounted for 35 percent of state and local government tax revenues.
• New Hampshire relied on property taxes the most with more than 64 percent of its total tax revenue derive from property tax, while Arkansas relied on property taxes the least with only 18.3 percent of its tax revenue coming from property taxes.
• Local government gets approximately 75 percent of its revenue from property taxes while states get less.
• Sales and gross receipt taxes, which include select taxes on alcoholic beverages, motor fuels, pari-mutuels, public utilities and tobacco products, comprise 34 percent of total U.S. state and local tax revenues. Washington derived 60 percent of its total tax revenue from sales and gross receipt taxes; by contrast, Oregon only yielded 10 percent through these taxes.
• Personal income taxes account for 20 percent of U.S. state and local taxes. Oregon derived 37.7 of its revenue from personal income taxes, followed by Maryland and New York at 35.6 and 31.2 percent, respectively. Seven states -- Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington and Wyoming -- have no personal income tax.
• Only 3 percent of total U.S. tax revenue came from corporate income taxes. Alaska depends on the corporate income tax the most, receiving 10 percent of its revenue through this means; Texas, Washington, Wyoming and Nevada have no state-level corporate income tax.
• Many states rely on a variety of other types of taxes, with the most common being on motor vehicle licenses. Other taxes, which amount to less than 10 percent of total tax revenues for 40 states, include severance taxes on natural resources, license taxes like those on hunting or fishing, stock transfer taxes, and estate, gift or inheritance taxes.

Progressives Say Middle Class in Decline : Wrong Again

The agenda of the progressive socialists is for all of us to believe we all would be better off living a more simple life rather then one were we strive for a better one then we started with, that is, a life that is affordable and prosperous. The Progressives tell us we are being used, the middle class is losing the battle for survival. The socialists say they have a plan to fix the problem.

The progressive socialist Democrats want everyone to be happy with less, and they believe if everyone, and they mean everyone, has no more then anyone else, equality and success will be nation wide. Happiness will be achieved in collectivism. Striving for more and better things in life will be eliminated, and therefore all the stress to achieve them as well.

The only thing we will have to give up to achieve success will be personal freedom and liberty. In the immortal words Sec. Hillary Clinton, " What difference does it make anyway," if we have a declining a level of satisfaction with out lives, the important thing is we all will be content with what we have. The socialists believe having a future is not all it's crapped up to be.

The Myth of the Stagnant Middle Class
February 1, 2013
Source: Donald Boudreax and Mark Perry, "The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class," Wall Street Journal, January 23, 2013.

A common gripe from progressives is that America's middle class has not benefited from the overall economic growth that has occurred since the 1970s. From this perspective, middle class America experienced flat wages and declining buying power. However, this is wrong, say Donald Boudreax, a professor of economics at George Mason University, and Mark Perry, a professor of economics at the University of Michigan-Flint.

• The average hourly wage of nonsupervisory workers when adjusted for inflation using the Consumer Price Index (CPI) has remained roughly the same since the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) started keeping track in 1964.
• Boudreax and Perry note that the CPI overestimates inflation because it overestimates the value of increases in product quality and variety, and fails to account for the rise in nontaxable fringe benefits like pensions and paid leave, which the BLS said accounts for 31 percent of total compensation.
• The CPI also fails to account for the influx of women and immigrants who have entered the workforce in the last three decades. Many of these new lower skilled workers found employment that pays a lower hourly wage, keeping the total average hourly wage stagnant.

While the average did not rise because of the influx in lower paid workers, many employees during the last 30 years have experienced a rise in their real wages as they have gained more experience and skills. Opponents of this view fail to account for these factors that indicate the inflation-adjusted CPI does not accurately predict the change in real wages. Indeed, middle class living standards have risen during this period.

• Life expectancy is a full five years higher today than in 1980 and the racial gap in life expectancy is now at its lowest point ever.
• Americans are also able to purchase more luxuries, as basic household spending has fallen from 44 percent of disposable income to 32 percent today.
• Life's "basics" have also gotten significantly more affordable. Middle class Americans can now easily afford air travel, which was once a luxury of the rich, just as they can now afford electronic gadgets like iPhones, iPads and the like.

Boudreax and Perry say that the average American would not find it prudent to trade his 2013 wages and benefits and affordable goods, housing and electronics for the wages, products and higher prices of the 1970s.

ObamaCare (ACA) Forces Families Out of Coverage

More bad news for families as a result of ObamaCare, but then the progressives really didn't consider what the problems might be for citizens when they cankered up this 2700 page nightmare they call sustainable health care. Families could have to pay more then $20,000 a year for health care even under the ACA plan. 

The entire Affordable Care Act (ACA) from the Obama administration is designed to reduce personal freedom and replace it with unsustainable dependency on government. There is no way the system, as the socialist have designed it, bringing in 30 million new recipients, can be paid for from new taxes as the new costs will be more then a trillion dollars. 

In reality, the ACA was only intended for the short term, bring as many individuals into the system as quickly as possible and then allow the system to collapse. Result, total control of  the entire population. No money and no health care.

This incredible disaster, that the progressive socialists see as affordable health care for everyone, is more managed news for the 'low inforamation' voter. The agenda is to keep the majority of the population ignorant and voting for more free stuff, and that this can not be financially sustained never enters the conservation.

But when the floor drops out from underneath the ignorant and slow witted, they will lift their collective heads from their IPads and IPhones, look around and ask 'what happened?' dah!

Some Families to Be Priced out of Health Overhaul
February 1, 2013
Source: Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, "Some Families to Be Priced out of Health Overhaul," Associated Press, January 30, 2013.

Some families could get priced out of health insurance due to what's being called a glitch in President Barack Obama's overhaul law. IRS regulations issued Wednesday failed to fix the problem as liberal backers of the president's plan had hoped, says the Associated Press.

As a result, some families that can't afford the employer coverage that they are offered on the job will not be able to get financial assistance from the government to buy private health insurance on their own. How many people will be affected is unclear.

• Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, an advocacy group for children, cited estimates that close to 500,000 children could remain uninsured because of the glitch.
• The problem seems to be the way the law defines affordable.

Congress says affordable coverage can't cost more than 9.5 percent of family income. People with coverage the law considers affordable cannot get subsidies to go into the new insurance markets. The purpose of that restriction is to prevent a stampede away from employer coverage.
Congress went on to say that what counts as affordable is keyed to the cost of self-only coverage offered to an individual worker, not his or her family.

• A typical workplace plan costs about $5,600 for an individual worker.
• But the cost of family coverage is nearly three times higher, about $15,700, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

So if the employer isn't willing to chip in for family premiums -- as most big companies already do -- some families will be out of luck. They may not be able to afford the full premium on their own, and they'd be locked out of the subsidies in the health care overhaul law.

Media Makes the Transition to Advoacay : Blinded by The Light

Well done article by David Limbaugh. The worst part about how Mr Obama got elected and reelected is that it seems a majority of the population are ready and willing to give up personal freedom for a supposedly secure and dependent life. Is this due to just bad times or is it the new normal as orchestrated by the progressive left. 

Remember, Mr Obama promised all these wonderful things for everyone, but as we all know just about everything he has promised has not come true, other then adding huge amounts to the national debt, a failed economy and a foreign policy of retreat.

What great reasons to vote for more of the same, right. Why would anyone actually vote for decline and despair.

Even worse maybe, when the public gradually becomes awake of how bad things have actually gotten, what will their collective reaction be? Who will they turn on? Who will they blame? 

Doctored Videotapes are Peanuts
David Limbaugh

Many have rightly condemned MSNBC's serpentine editing of a video to make it appear that certain gun rights activists heckled the father of a 6-year-old victim of the Sandy Hook shooting massacre, but let's not pretend this was a one-off event.

The liberal media long ago forfeited their respected role as watchdog over the government and have voluntary descended to the status of a public relations arm of the Democratic Party and various liberal causes.

It doesn't do it justice to call them cheerleaders, for they are active participants, every bit as much involved in bringing about the events as the party with which they collude.

They no longer merely report the news. They deliberately influence it to advance the liberal political agenda. So while they engage in plenty of deceptions on the micro level, they daily engage in a category of sin that far exceeds the despicable doctoring of videos.

For what they're about is grand deception on a macro scale. They aren't watchdogs, and they aren't just cheerleaders. Cheerleaders wear uniforms and are readily recognizable. These progressive media mavens are cloaked in a disguise of pseudo-neutrality and pseudo-objectivity, such that when they root for the political team that is assaulting America's founding principles and driving us headfirst into national ruin, many in their unwitting audience have no earthly idea they've got skin in the game.

The liberal media's fraud is so pervasive that by presenting the news through a distorted, progressive prism, they've created an alternate reality that bears little relationship to actual reality. What has emerged is a new normal, foisted on us by a cluster of malicious manipulators who long ago abandoned their honor and their professional calling.

This manufactured pseudo-universe is what allowed President Barack Obama to win re-election despite presiding over (and largely causing) the longest period of high unemployment since World War II and the worst recovery in 50 years. It's what enables him to enjoy a 60 percent approval rating despite being conspicuously radical, hyper-partisan, consciously divisive and dogmatically uncompromising.

Skilled Workers Needed to Fill (K) Jobs : Free Markets Work

Interesting take on manufacturing in this country in that authors believe the free market isn't adequate to produce the right quantity of workers and skill sets to fill needed jobs for manufacturing. Actually if the government would get out of the way, the free market system would work perfectly. But with supposedly free money for schooling and the promise of debt forgiveness, the recent graduate all to often makes the wrong decision. 

I believe the biggest problem is the false narrative that the individual that doesn't have a college eduction will not get ahead and prosper. Skilled jobs are in want everywhere one turns these days. It seems that when you graduate from high school, the only path to success is to attend a college or university to obtain a degree, but there in lies the problem, most of the high school graduates that attend college are not properly prepared or motivated. They have no idea what they want out of life, or if they do, how to get a good start. What they actually get from a failed college education is huge debt and four or five years of lost productivity.

A tech school is probably the best place to start for most high school graduates. Once you have a marketable skill, it will always be worth something as a back up to a failed college education, or it can provide a good life time source of income. Millions have done the tech school route and have prospered.

Addressing the Skills Gap in Manufacturing
February 1, 2013
Source: Thomas Hemphill, Waheeda Lillevik and Mark Perry, "Confronting the U.S. Advanced Manufacturing Skills Gap," The American, January 28, 2013.

Reports of a serious shortage of skilled manufacturing workers in the United States have been prevalent throughout the last decade of economic challenges, though the size of the shortage varies. At a time when the economy needs all the help it can get, the perceived gap between employment demand and skilled workers actually derives from a lack of manufacturers' willingness to pay, say Thomas A. Hemphill, an associate professor of strategy, innovation and public policy at the University of Michigan's Flint campus, Waheeda Lillevik, an assistant professor of human resources and management at the College of New Jersey, and Mark Perry, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics at the University of Michigan's Flint campus.

• A 2012 Boston Consulting Group (BCG) report concluded that the existing skills gap is more limited than has been previously reported with only five of the 50 largest manufacturing centers experiencing a shortage of high-skilled workers.
• The BCG report also found that 102 out of 389 Metropolitan Statistical Areas were facing gaps in job categories like machinists and welders who are typically paid roughly $10 per hour to operate highly sophisticated machines.
• At only $10 an hour, many potential employees do not deem the necessary training or work rewarding enough to pursue the technical jobs in demand.
• In total, while BCG estimates the overall skills shortage at between 80,000 and 100,000 manufacturing employees, U.S. manufacturing employment has increased by more than 500,000 positions over the last three years.

Growth in the manufacturing industry was a significant factor in helping America emerge from the Great Recession of 2009 and is expected to drive the continuing recovery.

• According to a recent survey in a report by consulting firm Deloitte and the Manufacturing Institute, 90 percent of the 1,000 Americans surveyed believe that manufacturing is "important" or "very important" and is more likely to create 1,000 jobs in their community than energy, technology or health care.
• The Society of Manufacturing Engineers predicts the shortfall to increase to 3 million jobs in 2015 as older workers retire -- the average age of manufacturing workers has risen from 40.5 years in 2000 to 44.1 years in 2011, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

As the manufacturing workforce ages and the estimations of how big the gap is vary greatly, the authors emphasize the need for proper training to address the shortfall. They state that we need to stop telling children manufacturing jobs are headed overseas, offer more internships and apprenticeships to complement formal skills-related educational programs, and ensure that potential employees are paid competitive wages.

Gun Back Ground Check 40% Myth : A Progressives Tool

As usual, the progressive socialists use misinformation and managed facts to misdirect the public attention from the truth, the real agenda of the socialist Democrats that now control most of the media in this country.

If the general public relies entirely on the main stream media as it's only source of information, they will never have the proper tools to make rational decisions to debate the financial or social problems that confront us today. Lacking the access to information for daily living limits the individuals ability to confront the 'facts' that are produced by the media as being less then accurate.

As this article points out the 'facts', 40% of gun sales do not have back ground checks are managed to meet the needs of an agenda, they do not represent the truth. But then it's not about the truth for progressives, it's really about controlling outcomes by any means necessary.

Dispelling a Common Gun-Control Myth
February 1, 2013
Source: John Lott, "The '40 Percent' Myth," National Review, January 29, 2013.


Gun-control advocates in the wake of the Sandyhook school shooting have used a particular statistic over and over again: "As many as 40 percent of guns are purchased without a background check." While President Obama, Vice President Biden, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and many others have used the "fact" repeatedly, it is false, says economist John Lott in the National Review.

• The Brady Act requires background checks to prevent someone from buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer if he or she has a felony, some misdemeanor convictions or has been involuntarily committed for mental illness. Before the Brady Act, simply a waiver needed to be signed.
• The "40 percent" claim misrepresents the actual number that was reported -- 36 percent -- which is still almost 25 percent above the accurate number, says Lott.
• The number 36 percent actually comes from a Clinton-era survey of 251 gun sales that occurred before the Brady Act required mandatory background checks. The survey asked buyers if they thought they were buying from a licensed dealer; many buyers who did not believe the seller was licensed actually bought from small dealers and did not know they were licensed.

Access to guns is also much more limited since many small dealers have been forced out of business. After accounting for guns that were bought, traded, rented, issued for a job or won through raffles, 85 percent went through federally licensed firearms dealers, meaning just 15 percent of the 251 gun sales were transferred without a background check. Lott says that if the same survey were performed today the numbers would likely be in the single digits.

• President Obama claimed that background checks have kept 1.5 million people from purchasing a weapon in the last 14 years but failed to explain that number reflected only initial denials.
• According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, 94 percent of those initial denials were dropped after preliminary reviews, almost all of the rest were dropped after extended reviews and only 62 people, or just 0.1 percent, were prosecuted for attempting to purchase a weapon.

Lott says that increasing background checks will constitute nothing more than an inconvenience for most gun purchasers and the delays may even trigger slight rises in violent crime.

Government Verses the People

What a great read from someone from the 'good old days' when Americans actually believed we had a future based on personal freedom and the rule of law set down by our Constitution. For many people among us this is incomprehensible - they are the ones that voted for Mr Obama and his promises of a level playing field and  fairness. Everyone will have the same opportunity to access dependence and poverty.

           545 vs. 300,000,000 People                                                                                                     -  

By Charlie Reese  - Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?
Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?
You and I don't propose a federal budget. The President does.
You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country. I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

 I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits.. ( The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.)

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?( John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want. ) If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to. [The House has passed a budget but the Senate has not approved a budget in over three years. The President's proposed budgets have gotten almost unanimous rejections in the Senate in that time. ]

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.
If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red.
If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it's because they want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ..

 If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems. Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power.

Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible. They, and they alone, have the power.
They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses. Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees... We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

 

 

Highway Systems Controlled by Free Enterprise Works : Who Knew?

This is old news that private enterprise can do something better then the federal government. This isn't the first article on this subject but many of the others were similar in that they all advocate taking the control of maintenance and funding of our highways out of the hands of governmental officials.

The fix is simple, private enterprises that run the show for profit, charging 'user fees' to fix and maintain our highway system. Taxes, Raod Fees, have lost their real effectiveness in that much of the funds collected are taken for other uses in the state for by our leaders in Washington.

Will the local and national governments let go of control - hmmmmm --- all that money taken out of the hands of the politicians -  -  - maybe not .

Privatizing Roads Will Improve America's Roads
February 1, 2013
Source: David Levinson, "Enterprising Roads: Improving the Governance of America's Highways," Reason Foundation, January 2013.

For many years, the federal government has owned and managed most roads in the United States with some modicum of success, despite traffic congestion and pot holes. More recently, the cost of maintaining roads has risen and fuel tax receipts have fallen, leading to the need for a new, more sustainable model for America's roads, says David Levinson of the Reason Foundation.

• Current gas tax receipts will not provide enough revenue for the government to continue maintaining America's existing infrastructure.
• The organizations that built Eisenhower's road system are no longer properly suited to maintain them.
• The best solution to crumbling roads and miniscule infrastructure appropriations is to allow a variety of ownership structures to assume responsibility for maintaining and expanding roads.

Levinson explores various ownership models, ranging from municipal- or state-ownership to mutual- and investor-ownership. Each of the new structures will distance the road system from political influence and instead focus on offering users more value. It will also allow the various models to raise capital and finance new construction and maintenance through the sale of bonds.

• Regulated utilities have already been successful in many important sectors, including telecommunication -- where almost all utilities are investor-owned -- and in water and wastewater utilities, where 20 percent and 10 percent of each sector, respectively, is investor-owned.
• Different ownership structures have allowed New Zealand to recognize large efficiency gains without sacrificing service levels by separating management from governance and service delivery from policy.
• Many of Australia's roads are managed through competitive road enterprises with great success.

New road enterprises in America should be granted the ability to charge user fees in place of relying on general funds. Various methods are effective at supporting a pay-for-use system including vehicle-miles-traveled charges, weight-distance charges and electronic tolling.

This would create new avenues for revenue and funding, ensure quality of service for users and improve administrative efficiency. Testing the new models will invariably involve a learning curve that will witness some successes and some failures.

 By adopting the perspective that each state is a policy lab that can experiment with these new enterprises, the sum of all the experiments may lead to a more effective overall system of public road management.

Progressives - Gun Ownership Is Bad : Problem Solved

Food for thought - Given the over reaction from Washington, the progressive socialist liberal Democrats, on the horrific slaughter of children at Sandy Hook school, to ban nearly all semi-automatic weapons, gives pause to those of us that are owners of said weapons and that believe we aren't the problem.

We, as legal gun owners, have to step back a little and consider where all of this insanity is headed. It appears that we are the easiest target for political gain by those that wish to use this terrible tragedy to advance their personal agenda.

They believe that our guns are the problem and not the insane individual that have pulled the trigger that killed these children. This is just another up-tick in the agenda first established by the the present mayor of Chicago, " never let a good crisis go to waste".

(Author Unknown)

I had never thought about this before but...

A blogger added up the deer license sales

In just a handful of states

And arrived at a striking
Conclusion -There
Were over 600,000 hunters

This season in the state of Wisconsin .

Allow me to restate that number:
Over the last
Several months,

Wisconsin's hunters became the eighth
Largest army in the world.
More men under arms than in Iran .
More than France and Germany combined.
These men deployed to
The woods of a single American state,

Wisconsin, to hunt with
Firearms, and no one was killed.

That number pales in comparison to the
750,000 who hunted the woods of
Pennsylvania and then Michigan 's
700,000 hunters,

All of whom
Have now returned home safely.

Toss in a quarter million hunters
In West Virginia

And it literally establishes the fact
That the hunters of those four
States alone would comprise the
Largest army in the world.

And then add in the total number
Of hunters in the other
46 states.

It's millions more.

The point?America will forever be safe

From foreign invasion
With that kind of home-grown
Firepower.

Hunting....

it's not just
A way to fill the freezer..

It's a matter of

National security.

***************************************
That's why all enemies,

Foreign and domestic,

Want to see us
Disarmed.

Food for thought,

When next we
Consider gun control.

Have A Great Day!
-------------------------------------
Overall it's true,

So if we disregard some assumptions

That hunters
Don't possess the same skills as soldiers,

The question would still remain...

What army of
2 million

Would want to face 30, 40, 50 million armed citizens.

Chicago Mayor 'Smacked Down' by Sen. Ted Cruz : Texas Has Freedom

This missive is from the Wall Street Journal and needs no further commentary - Senator Cruz tells the mayor of Chicago that Texas has freedom of expression and a passion for the rights of all to succeed.

This is good stuff - smack

Gunning for Chicago
By COLLIN LEVY WSJ 1-31-13

Chicago is having a hard enough time keeping companies from moving to business-friendlier states like nearby Wisconsin and Michigan . Now the city will have to worry about Texas , too.

That was the upshot of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz's letter this week to two banks, two firearm manufacturers and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Washington Examiner reports that Mr. Emanuel recently suggested that Bank of America and TD Bank "revoke the lines of credit they offer to Sturm, Ruger, and Co. and Smith & Wesson, respectively, unless those weapons manufacturers back gun control measures."

 

In his letter, the Republican senator told the banks that they might consider relocating to Texas , where the government does not believe in "trying to harass or pressure private companies into enlisting in a political lobbying campaign." He added: "In light of the reception you have received in the Windy City , please know that Texas would certainly welcome more of your business and the jobs you create."

Addressing the CEOs of Smith & Wesson and Sturm Ruger, Mr. Cruz wrote: "Attempts to put law-abiding gun makers out of business hardly qualify as 'modest common-sense gun control' . . .. Should Mayor Emanuel's bullying campaign prove successful, I am confident there are numerous financial institutions in Texas that would be eager to earn your business."

Finally, Mr. Cruz turned his attention to the Democratic mayor of Chicago . "[Y]our city's longstanding policies stripping citizens of their constitutional right to keep and bear arms have, in turn, produced some of the very highest crime and murder rates in the nation," wrote the senator. "Your continued anti-gun crusade may well cause some to wonder if the interests of the citizens of Chicago are being sacrificed in pursuit of a partisan agenda."