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The Editors of the Wall Street Journal on How Texas Adds Jobs. The Wall Street Journal notes the "remarkable fact" that "37% of all net new American jobs since the recovery began were created in Texas." Moreover, Texas is also among the few states that are "home to more jobs than when the recession began in December 2007." So what explain the state's success? What makes it stand out, according to the Journal, is "its free market and business-friendly climate... Texas has no state income tax. Its regulatory conditions are contained and flexible. It is fiscally responsible and government is small. Its right-to-work law doesn't impose unions on businesses or employees. It is open to global trade and competition." Richard Fisher, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, also told the Journal that the state's ongoing reform of the tort system has given it "huge competitive advantages," according to CEOs and other business leaders. The Journal concludes that "the core impulse of Obamanomics is to make America less like Texas and more like California, with more government, more unions, more central planning, higher taxes. That the former added 37% of new U.S. jobs suggests what an historic mistake this has been."
Charles M. Blow on the Failed War on Drugs. "Friday marks the 40th anniversary of one of the biggest, most expensive, most destructive social policy experiments in American history," writes Charles M. Blow, referencing America's War on Drugs. He characterizes the war as "a self-perpetuating, trillion-dollar economy of wasted human capital, ruined lives and decimated communities." The real casualty of this war has been, he posits, the black community. "An effort meant to save us from a form of moral decay became its own insidious brand of moral perversion — turning people who should have been patients into prisoners, criminalizing victimless behavior, targeting those whose first offense was entering the world wrapped in the wrong skin." But despite reports, including last week's Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, that the war has failed, the Obama administration continues to bring forth "debatable" statistics about its success. "In doing so, it completely sidestepped the human, economic and societal toll of the mass incarceration of millions of Americans, many for simple possession. No need to put a human face on 40 years of folly when you can swaddle its inefficacy in a patchwork quilt of self-serving statistics."