Ceres Unified School Board Member and farmer Bill Berryhill is continuing his march through the 26th district (disclosure: Berryhill is a client) by racking up endorsements of all the GOP Supervisors in San Joaquin County along with former Assemblyman and congressional candidate Dean Andal. Supervisors Leroy Ornellas, Ken Vogel and Larry Ruhstaller add to a formidable endorsement list that includes the GOP power structure in Stanislaus County as well as local GOP Senators Dave Cogdill and Jeff Denham. The 26th district is currently held by Assemblyman Greg Aghazarian, who is running for the 5th Senate District.

There were early rumblings of democrats hoping to find a viable candidate to contest this nearly even registration seat until Berryhill emerged strongly. Due to his formidable name identification advantage, 200K warchest and agricultural background it is extremely unlikely that a viable candidate will emerge. Even with all those disadvantages, there is one more disadvantage that a democrat nominee would face: Bill Berryhill’s strongest support will come from Stanislaus County and for any democrat to win they must win Stanislaus County… Read More

First, let me commend the Governor for most of his budget. He is still claiming that a fee is not a tax, which is wrong, particularly when it is for essential government services like fire fighting, but he is finally getting around to actually cutting government. I also believe that cutting the size of state government is so important that no Republican should spend any time trying to defend any government program, even prisons. The general budget strategy of the Democrats in the past has been toincrease welfare and health care spending, and to cut police, fire and prisons. Republicans have taken the tack of pushing toincrease police, fire, and prisons, and cut welfare and health care spending. The usual compromise between Democrats and Republicans has been to increase spending on everything.

Second, let me commend Senate Republicans, whose insistence on some cuts last year turned a budget crisis that would have started out at $21 billion and grown to $30 billion, into a budget crisis that has started out at $14 billion, and will expand to $21 billion. Their willingness to sacrifice their political capital for the good of the state should be widely… Read More

Doolittle Does Something

Few Republicans were weeping yesterday when California Rep. John Doolittle announced that he won’t seek a tenth House term.

Mr. Doolittle is widely seen as departing ahead of the posse. Last year, the FBI raided his Virginia home and issued subpoenas to the congressman and five staff members in a probe of his wife’s fundraising business. The case involves Mr. Doolittle’s ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. While Mr. Doolittle has denied any wrongdoing, the reports kept alive the aura of GOP corruption that helped Democrats retake the House and Senate in 2006.

Retiring may be Mr. Doolittle’s last, best favor… Read More

With the announcement of John Doolittle’s retirement comes more bad news for Nancy Pelosi and House democrats. Dean Andal, challenger to vulnerable democrat Jerry McNerney has received the endorsement of the Club for Growth which will guarantee an even heavier flow of financial resources into the 11th Congressional District.

Andal, in his time in the State Assembly and on the Board of Equalization, has crafted a strong pro-taxpayer record in favor of lower taxes and cutting wasteful government spending. Just this week, Andal revealed at a meeting of the South San Joaquin Republican Club that he had raised over a half million dollars already for this race and is running hard on the economic issues of taxes and cutting wasteful spending.

Club for Growth President Pat Toomey had this to say about the race in his release announcing the Club’s support for Andal:

"Dean Andal has an impressive record on economic issues with the potential to be a superstar if elected to Congress. His principled fight against wasteful government spending and his tireless work on behalf of taxpayers will be a vast improvement over Rep. McNerney. While this… Read More

I came to the conclusion John & Ken were intellectual frauds during the 35th Senate special election back in 2005, when they viciously and dishonestly turned on then-state Sen. John Campbell and propped up Jim Gilchrist like puppeteers.

So it was interesting to read this website posted by former KFI talk show host John Ziegler called TheRealKFI.com.

In it, Ziegler chronicles his career at KFI, the key role John & Ken played in his forced exit and his opinion, based on observing them for four years, that J & K are entertainers pretending to be a couple of Howard Beals.

A friend e-mailed the link to me, and the site must be getting overwhelmed with traffic because when I clicked the next page it usually wouldn’t load until after several attempts.… Read More

UPDATE: 845am – Associated Press is also now carrying this story. Congressman John Doolittle is holding a press conference at 10:30 a.m. this morning, and it has been widely speculated that he will be announcing his retirement from Congress at the end of the year.

That said, David Drucker over at Roll Call has decided to "call this one early" through sources, with the story that Doolittle, is in fact, hanging up his political shoes.

Here is the story: California Source: Doolittle to Announce Retirement Today Thursday, Jan. 10,… Read More

Later today, the Governor is going to unveil is proposed 2007-2008 budget. Based on the portions of his State of the State Address from earlier in the week, it sounds like a budget proposal that our readers will like.

Although the State of the State left us in a doubt as to the Governor’s reasons for proposing pretty heavy cuts in state government (we here at the FR feel that significant cuts in state government levels would be a good thing whether the state had enough tax income or not — because we also think that taxes are too high in the Golden State), we are pleased that for very pragmatic reasons, the Governor has pulled out his red pen.

In order to spend more time heaping anticipated praise on the Governor’s proposed budget, I thought I would take a little bit of time to focus some sharp criticism on one small part of the Governor’s plan — a proposal to tax property insurance premiums for every policy, residential and commerical in the state. This proposal would increase the size of state government by over a hundred million bucks a year, said moneys to go towards helping the state’s efforts to fight… Read More

Later today, the Governor is going to unveil is proposed 2007-2008 budget. Based on the portions of his State of the State Address from earlier in the week, it sounds like a budget proposal that our readers will like.

Although the State of the State left us in a doubt as to the Governor’s reasons for proposing pretty heavy cuts in state government (we here at the FR feel that significant cuts in state government levels would be a good thing whether the state had enough tax income or not — because we also think that taxes are too high in the Golden State), we are pleased that for very pragmatic reasons, the Governor has pulled out his red pen.

In order to spend more time heaping anticipated praise on the Governor’s proposed budget, I thought I would take a little bit of time to focus some sharp criticism on one small part of the Governor’s plan — a proposal to tax property insurance premiums for every policy, residential and commerical in the state. This proposal would increase the size of state government by over a hundred million bucks a year, said moneys to go towards helping the state’s efforts to fight… Read More