• Yesterday at a rare, joint meeting of the California State Senate and Assembly, lawmakers were treated to a admonishment by state finance officials about the dire circumstances facing the State of California.  It’s a bad situation, made worse for every day that action isn’t taken.  The question is whether the Democrats who dominate the legislature now truly understand the gravity of the situation and are ready to take a reasoned approach to making significant cuts in state government – we’re talking about ideas like eliminating functions of state government
• Last night, the San Diego County Republican Party unanimously endorsed my candidacy for re-election as Vice-Chairman, South, of the California Republican Party.  The Southern Region includes Orange, Riverside, San Diego and Imperial Counties, and contains about 1/5 of the state’s 1500 or so State Central Committee Members.  Last month I was unanimously endorsed by the Orange County Republican Party.  Recently I announced my re-election campaign, and listed my prominent GOP endorsements.  So far things are looking great for my campaign – the election will be held in February at the State GOP Convention in Sacramento.  Congratulations to San Diego County GOP Chairman Tony Krvaric and his team, who were all re-elected to their county positions as well.
  
• I figure that every time I write about the state budget, I should go find some other Agency, Department or program in the budget that should be abolished.  So I went onto the California State website this morning, and it took me about a nano-second to find one:  The California Housing Finance Agency.  This Agency is burdening the state with costs associated with hundreds of state employees and is in the business of redistributing wealth.  With our state’s fiscal situation at a crisis moment, let’s collectively decide that state government should get out of the business of social engineering home ownership opportunities.   A critical look at everything state government does currently is needed, and Democrats need to swallow the tough pill – state government is going to do less with less.
  
• As a conservative Republican, I am not really excited about the impending Presidency of Barack Obama.  His view of a more expansive role for the federal government at the expense of the freedom and liberty of Americans is a throw-back to Jimmy Carter.   That said, with the news today that President Bush is going to sign-off on a $15 billion taxpayer bailout for U.S. Automakers has me, frankly, looking forward to a rapid end to this President’s term.  George Bush has been a disaster, and it is embarrassing to me, as a Republican leader, that the President of my party would agree to use federal tax dollars to bail out U.S. corporations.  We have a bankruptcy system in America for a reason – to allow businesses, large and small, to reorganize under the auspices of the courts.  Maybe the “Big 3” restructure and reorganize in this process, or maybe they don’t, and one or all of them cease to exist.  Life will go on.  But since when should a Republican President be signing off on the idea that there is a “national responsibility” of all Americans to subsidize private companies?  This on the heels of his administrations immoral "bail out" of Wall Street.  Maybe when Bush retires to his new home in Dallas, he can spend some time reading some Friedman, Smith or Locke.
  
• Hopefully Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Speaker Karen Bass have gathered Democrats in a room and created their "OK, we can’t raise taxes or borrow more money, so what do we cut before the money runs out and decisions get made for us" Working Group…

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.