An insulted Rick Perry goes on California job-poaching tour

Rick Perry, seen here designing a new printed circuit board Texas Gov. Rick Perry is continuing his efforts to poach California jobs instead of creatin' some of his own, but I have to think it's mostly for show. The California governor insulted him, so now he's gonna double up his previously lame efforts:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is stepping up efforts to woo the California business community, even as his earlier attempts were dismissed as 'barely a fart' by the Golden State governor.

The GOP governor of the Lone Star State will leave on Sunday for a swing through San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles and Orange County, where he will meet with 'business leaders in the high tech, biotechnology, financial, insurance and film industries,' according to a statement from his office released Thursday.

As Markos pointed out, businesses in Silicon Valley and other California tech hot spots are there for a reason. They're not going to be eager to pick up and move to Perry's vision of a low wage, low education state. Perry's not trying to woo them by promising anything except lower taxes, but if these companies are in California, they're already plenty familiar with the tax issue, and still made their choice.

Perry is trying hard to make Texas into a business-friendly state mainly by slashing taxes and dumping as many worker protections as possible, thus turning the state into a slightly more convenient Mexico. (Sorry, Mexico. I mean no insult.) Low-wage industries love that approach; more specialized industries and, frankly, more decent ones don't care so much. As far as I can tell, then, Perry's not-entirely-serious pitch to California businesses is "hey, you could maybe move all your crap jobs to Texas, right?" The industries he's targeting (all right, insurance, I'll give you that one) don't have all that many crap jobs, though. They're based where they are for a reason.

Maybe California should try poaching some jobs from Texas in retaliation. Texas still has its own vibrant tech base, though Rick Perry can claim responsibility for exactly none of it'maybe the California pitch could be "Come move to California. We don't have Rick Perry."