Writing at RealClearMarkets, Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute examines the consequences of government regulations and policies in California that have made the state a high-cost place to do business. Malanga pegs the column to a recent visit to Texas by California state legislators and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom to investigate how the Lone Star State has done so much better in job creation than the Golden State.

One theme is obvious and persistent when you peruse dozens of stories on California companies that have pulled up stakes in the past few years: Many are going somewhere else to lower costs, whether it’s a shipping company moving HQ jobs from Oakland to Phoenix, or a software maker leaving North Hollywood for Austin, or a visual effects studio leaving Venice, Ca., for Port St. Lucie and Vancouver.

Some firms also say they are leaving because California’s state and local budget crunch has made government voracious. LegalZoom, the online company, is leaving Los Angeles for Austin because of a lengthy dispute with city government over taxes. One thing that sealed the move: When the firm’s 400 employees heard the company was contemplating leaving, some began asking to relocate. Meanwhile, Creators Syndicate, the media syndication company, has also contemplated leaving because of a dispute over taxes with the city of Los Angeles that prompted an official of the company to accuse the city of operating like a “banana republic” and its bureaucrats of acting like “Stalin’s apparatchiks.”

And for all the state’s emphasis on “green jobs,” companies that manufacture environmentally oriented products are escaping California, as well.

Malanga accurately analyzes the problem, and Jack Stewart, president of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, offers a solution. In a new column, “Texas Trip Confirms: California Needs a Plan to Create Jobs,” Jack argues: (continue reading…)

Page 1 of today’s Washington Post carries this story, “Cellphone industry attacks San Francisco’s ruling on radiation”:

San Francisco, a city that banned the plastic bag, now has waded into the muddy territory of cellphone radiation, setting off a call to arms in the $153 billion wireless industry.

Last week, the Board of Supervisors passed a law — the first in the nation — requiring retailers to inform their customers how much radiation the cellphones on their shelves emit, so shoppers can figure out how close the devices come to the upper limits on radiation set by the Federal Communications Commission.

The law, which goes into effect early next year, didn’t mention the word, but it was all about one thing: cancer, and whether cellphones cause it.

Walter Olson at Overlawyered.com observes, “Study after study finds no health effects to worry about, but the city by the Bay wants warnings anyway.”

And Ted Frank of the Manhattan Institute comments at Point of Law:

Even aside from the foolishness of having municipalities regulate interstate commerce labeling requirements (what happens when Chicago decides that cell-phone warning labels should be in a different font than San Francisco does?), the San Francisco legislation is, as I noted in a January AOLNews piece, counterproductive to consumer safety and not, as Mayor Newsom would have it, “relatively benign.”

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We wonder: Do trial lawyers have any interest in undermining federal preemption and exacerbating public anxieties about cell phone radiation? Possibly.

Given the anti-consumer, anti-choice, anti-hydration tirades that the Know Betters are leading around the country, we thought it might informative to note that bottled water has a long and proud history in this nation.

Why, a salt-deprived Sgt. Joe Friday of the Los Angeles Police Department (Badge 714) was even singing Poland Water’s praises back in the early ’50s. His exact quote: “That’s good water.” Endorsements come no stronger.

That’s a clip from “The Big False Make,” first broadcast May 27, 1954. Downloaded from the great public domain site, Archive.org.

Elsewhere in bottled water news, H2O-lier-than-thou Mayor Newsom of San Francisco is proved to like the convenience of the product after all. From the SF Gate’s City Insider column, “Newsom sneaking around and sipping out of a bottle?”

This week, the City Insider spotted an almost empty case of bottled water in the back of Mayor Gavin Newsom’s hybrid sport utility vehicle as it was parked in front of City Hall. At least one full bottle of Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring Water remained under the plastic covering.

This from the mayor who in June 2007 issued an executive order directing city government to no longer purchase bottled water, saying the containers clog landfills while the city owns a pristine reservoir in the Sierra Nevada that produces some of the country’s best-rated tap water.

Newsom, a former restaurateur, last year called on the restaurant industry to stop selling bottled water to customers and start serving local tap water instead.

Because of that, the mayor generally declines bottled water at any event or meeting, lest he be photographed with an offending bottle.

His explanation this time? It was for my security detail. Yeah, that’s it, my security detail. Here, let me introduce you to its lead officer, Sgt. Joe Friday.

(Hat tip: WAMU’s The Big Broadcast, which broadcast the radio version of “The Big False Make” last Sunday.)