The Lone Star State has boosted tax incentives for Hollywood to $300 million every two years, with guaranteed funding for ten years.
According to my public school math, that’s $1.5 billion in corporate welfare for an industry that hates Texas, hates Texans, and opposes tax cuts for everyone else.
Why do this?
Texas has two reasons, per the far-left Los Angeles Times…
Well, first off, Texas believes Hollywood business boosts other businesses — hotels, restaurants, etc.
Okay, but what business doesn’t boost other businesses? Nothing makes film, TV, and advertising uniquely special in this regard.
Here’s what drives me insane about this rationalization to give taxpayer-funded handouts to people who hate taxpayers, especially Texas taxpayers. First is that the government, including state government, should not be picking winners and losers. Well, the entertainment industry deserves a tax break, but not any other industries. That is no way to run a state or country. Some guy with eight employees is trying to keep his printing company afloat, while a bunch of left-wing multinational corporations live off the fat of the land? That’s bullshit.
Then there’s the hypocrisy. The entertainment industry is as far left as any industry in America. It’s an industry that props up socialist Democrats who detest any tax break for any American or any American business not called PBS or Planned Parenthood.
What’s more, movies and TV shows relentlessly push propaganda against corporations, they still slander Reaganomics and attack tax cuts of any kind as evil… And yet, here Hollywood is with its big, fat, wealthy, progressive hand out looking for a handout funded by everyday working people.
If Hollywood were in favor of tax cuts for everyone, if Hollywood would admit that Reaganomics works (not just for the entertainment business), I still wouldn’t like corporate welfare. Still, it would remove the gall of the shameless hypocrisy.
The second reason Texas is offering all this corporate welfare is…
“We are not trying to make Texas the next Hollywood — we don’t like Hollywood. We want to export Texas values,” said Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick,” reports the Times, who describes Patrick as a “staunch conservative who has relentlessly opposed legalized marijuana, gambling, and abortion.”
Nevertheless, Patrick has vowed to “make Texas the Film Capital of the World.”
That seems pretty naïve to me. Back in the Golden Age, during the Studio Era, when Hollywood was mostly a Republican town, it was because of where the people who found and ran the industry came from, which was all over the country. Not just the executives, but also the stars. Back then, no one was to the manor born. They were merchants, farmers, hustlers, businessmen, and mostly products of Middle and Small Town America.
That’s all changed now. Hollywood is a cesspool of leftism mostly because of where the people who populate it come from, who are to the manor born: both the nepotism of growing up in a show business world and the provincialism of being raised in Southern California. Plus, there’s the conservative blacklist to keep the entertainment industry culture ideologically “pure.”
You want to import that into Texas?
“The bill, which supports the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Fund (TMIIF) program, offers tiered grants up to 25% for projects spending $1.5 million in the state,” the L.A. Times adds. “Faith-based films and those that shoot in historic sites or employ a percentage of crew who are Texas-based military veterans can push grants up to 31%.”
The bill also gives the governor’s office “broad discretion over which projects receive funds.” These funds can be denied if it’s decided that the “material… portrays Texas negatively or contains ‘inappropriate’ content.”
I still remember this single example…
“In 2010, then-Gov. Rick Perry’s administration yanked funding for the Robert Rodriguez film Machete over concerns that the movie portrayed Texas negatively.”
No one should receive special tax cuts or credits, especially an industry devoted to increasing everyone else’s taxes.
John Nolte’s first and last novel, Borrowed Time, is winning five-star raves from everyday readers. You can read an excerpt here and an in-depth review here. Also available in hardcover and on Kindle and Audiobook.
