Last Thursday, State Senator Monique Limon and Assemblymember Gregg Hart hosted a hearing on the new effort by Sable, a Texas-based oil company, to reopen some offshore oil drilling that has been shut down since the Refugio Oil Spill that took place a decade ago. Before I talk about the hearing a bit, I want to make it clear that everyone wants to make sure that California’s beautiful coastline is preserved for current and future generations. But it is also the case that if you want California to simply be pristine and untouched by humankind, clearly the best plan for that would be to eject the people from the Golden State, and make it one big nature preserve. But of course that is not realistic. There is a reality of 40 million of us living here. That many people are enormous consumers of — everything. Which includes, of course, energy. So it is the job of public policy makers to have a balanced public policy, that both safeguards our natural resources but which has an intense focus on allowing the people in California to flourish in their lives. I do not think I need to write too much about this in this space, but tens of millions of people… Read More

When providing analysis to my friends of President Trump’s actions, there is one overriding question. I have criticized positions of Trump despite overwhelmingly supporting his positions and actions. The one clear place with which I currently disagree with and would love to see the Administration change positions is sending checks to taxpayers for cost reductions in the federal government. These reductions would be realized by reducing the federal workforce and reining in expenditures, many of them fraudulent. President Trump has taken many actions for which I am delighted. Banning DEI is among the top. It has a perceived ideological stink, misdirection from our historical standards of equality and promoting merit above physical aspects and wastes time and money on nonsense. I also love banning biological men from women’s sports. God knows how many times I have written about that. My personal favorite move by the President is the banning of paper straws. If there is a common cause of the American people, it is to discard this Leftist boondoggle. The ideas that are generated from DOGE are now penetrating all departments with the approval of the… Read More

I never like suggesting a course of action without also suggesting a strategy and plan to implement that course. Yesterday, I said fight, and choose a Republican leader who will fight. But “fighting” without a strategy and a plan is simply flailing. Flailing is not fighting, and you can’t fight something with nothing.

I believe we are on the cusp of major changes in California, but those changes will not occur on their own. Republicans will need to be prepared and need to be ready to work to achieve those changes. It won’t happen in one election cycle, it will occur over several, but Republicans need to have a plan to exploit the unease most voters feel about the continuing Democrat majorities. These changes have occurred in other states over time, and came from the same reasons. Voters felt the unease and the Republicans in those states were ready with an agenda and a plan to implement that agenda. Voters were unhappy with Democrats in those states, and Republicans exploited the unhappiness over several elections cycles and ultimately took over those Legislatures.

The first step in taking over any legislative body is to… Read More

I read recently that there was an internal discussion in the Assembly Republican Caucus about the direction it should take as the Assembly Republican Leader, James Gallagher, leaves the Legislature next year due to term limits. This is not a new disagreement. Republicans have, for as long as I can remember, always had s discussion about the best way to handle their minority status. Do we fight or do we figure out how to “get things done.” For those who care, I have only one piece of advice that comes from my Legislative experience. My advice?

FIGHT

Always fight, never stop fighting, always look for the Ds political weakness, and exploit them as best you can, fighting with all the energy and resources you can muster.

When I was first elected, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting convened by former State Senator H.L. Richardson. Through the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, he was the voice of conservatives in California. At the meeting, he took each of us who attended aside for a private meeting. In that meeting, he asked me “What do you think you’re role is in the Legislature?” I said… Read More

Let’s refresh what we learned in our Budgetese as a Second Language (BSL) lesson yesterday:

Base – what the government agency spent last year

Budget Change Proposal (BCP) – what the government agency wants to spend this year.

Baseline Budget – the base plus the BCP number

Budget Cuts – Cuts to the Baseline Budget, usually a reduction in the amount requested in the BCP

Line item – each individual BCP request per program

Legislative Action – the vote by the decision makers on the BCP requests.

Now, with that refresher, we are ready to talk about zero base budgeting. Simply stated, a zero base budget process requires the bureaucracy to assume a zero base when it prepares its BCP. What that means is that expenditures for personnel, equipment, logistics, real estate leasing or purchase costs, plus transfers made to accomplish the mission of the bureaucracy are listed in the BCP, and the decision maker, that is, legislator or member of Congress can see everything on which the bureaucracy is spending to accomplish its purpose, not just want they want is the coming… Read More

I have to admit, I am really enjoying the DOGE process, and how they have been handling the “obviously” bloated federal government. It has generated a lot of whining by the three million federal employees who feed off the taxpayer all across the country, but it has been a necessary part of bringing the federal government under control, and reducing the extraordinary cost of the continuing expansion of the power and control of those three million federal bureaucrats (not one of whom has been elected). The question is: how do we make these amazing advances permanent?

The answer: Zero Base Budgeting.

What is that, many people ask, how does it work? To understand it, we need to have an understanding about how government budgeting works. I am not familiar with the federal budgeting “language,” but I can guarantee, the process of getting a budget at the federal level is very similar to that used by state government. The words may be different, but the process works the same.

So let’s talk about how the state budget is achieved. The first thing to understand is that government budget types have their own language.… Read More

I read extensively writers arguing their points of view from the left of center. Any experienced reader of mine knows that I believe you must understand what the people believe who occupy the opposing domain to your personal policy beliefs. You must attempt to understand their positions. If you can gain clarity in those positions and still disagree, you are typically in a much better position to argue against them. Recently, their beliefs were unmasked by a noted columnist on a central policy discussion in the public arena. Rare clarity has been provided. As you may know, I don’t think for the most part the Left is evil. I think they are sadly misguided in their analysis of public policy positions. I believe quite often they either omit facts because of their unwillingness to engage people with opposing opinions or their logic is deeply flawed. That is what leads to them expressing their views in nonsensical manners, ala Kammy Harris. On this occasion a major opinion writer at a significant publication explained his thinking regarding Trump’s method of auditing the expenditures at a variety of government agencies and conclusions that were offered… Read More

Like most everyone, I too was taken aback by the horrific release of the dead bodies returned to Israel. We knew they were holding dead bodies. We knew this moment would come, but when it came it still staggered the mind and wrenched emotions. I would be sitting, and my mind would drift to the thought of what had just occurred. I would start to cry. In the middle of work or in the middle of lunch or sitting on the couch at home I could not escape the horror, and you begin to wonder how we got to this place. I have read about people acting inhumanely over the centuries. You can’t really classify them as “barbarians.” The word comes from the Greeks and was perpetuated by the Romans to address “the other” — the people who weren’t Greeks or Romans. It has become a word that over the years symbolizes the thoughts of the most uncivilized and brutal people. Attila the Hun and then Genghis Khan were widely known for brutalizing people they conquered. Hamas has no apparent peer rivaling their degenerate behavior. The only thing that comes to mind is the Hutus’ mass murder of Tutsis in Rwanda. They raped and killed women and children in large… Read More