I’m certainly not a "classicist," but like some other political junkies I have enjoyed reading Colleen McCullough’s series of historical novels about politics, military history, culture, and life in ancient Rome. The parallels of and constants of life 2,000 years ago to today are quite evident in McCullough’s writings. But of course, she is a writer of historical fiction! So after reading all her stuff on ancient Rome, years ago I advanced from her writings to the real thing: Cicero, Julius Caesar, and the writings of a true contemporary classicist, Michael Grant, a British historian and academic.

One of the main things I learned in all this reading was believe it or not, about campaign finance reform! As an election attorney, I was quite interested to learn about the election procedures and rules in the Roman Republic; what inspired them, and how they worked. I was also interested to see that campaign finance reform is nothing new, it has been around for at least 2,000 years! It has its roots in laws that restricted politicians in ancient Rome from investing in anything other than real property as a pre-condition to… Read More

Assembly session is at 2 PM today. Just a few bills on the file today on our floor. The other big doings coming soon are the State of the State speech tomorrow at precisely 2:45PM in our chamber. [The story for the odd and early start time is that the New Hampshire primary would overshadow the speech or vise versa.] Then comes theGuv’s budget proposal on Jan. 10. The mother of all budget fights is probable this year. The drumbeat for tax increases and the phony excuses for increased fees for service will be steady. And about 1000-1500 more bills will be introduced this first couple months, as well as the 2-year bills that are still lurking. All this coupled with the hyper activity around Prop 93’s term limits extension, that decision by voters that will affect the future of leadership and policy here after Feb 5 will make this a fascinating 2nd year of this session. Hold on to your hat, and wallet. Happy New Year!… Read More

I don’t have much time, so I am going to make this quick. I just wanted to say it before New Hampshire.

The California primary will be irrelevant–again. The nominees, whoever they happen to be, will have sown up their respective nominations before the Presidential primary election. The desparate hopes of the politicians of this state to be relevant will once again be dashed, and the California primary election, except for the propositions, will once again be a meaningless exercise.

So, this is my plea to the California Legislature. Please, Please, Please change the Presidential primary back to June. Let’s help restore sanity, deliberation, and reflection to this process by stopping the race to be first, or even relevant, and accept that the only real way for California to be relevant is to extend out the process, so that all candidates have a chance to win, and it takes longer for any one candidate to get the nomination. That might even make it so that no candidate has a majority of the delegates until the primary in California, and everyone will campaign here for two or three weeks before the first Tuesday in June.

Just a… Read More

Is The East County Californian, the local weekly (and formerly daily) newspaper of record since 1892, trying to change its left-leaning tilt with the hiring of longtime local news hound Greg Eichelberger as editor? One might have hoped.

The paper’s 12/27/07 “A year in review: 2007,” by Nick Pellegrino, noted as one of the year’s top stories the announcement by perennial-office-seeker Vickie Butcher that she would now seek the Democratic nomination for the 52nd Congressional District. Good for her, making the list of the year’s most significant stories.

Yet, nowhere in the yearly recap was any mention of the similar announcements by Republicans Duncan D. Hunter, Brian Jones, Ken King or Bob Watkins. It speaks loads that the declaration by one that has run unsuccessfully multiple times for city council is deemed more noteworthy than that of, say, Councilman Jones, or School Board Trustee Watkins, or even Hunter, son-of-the-current-congressman. Apparently, from a news standpoint, such titles are of the chopped liver variety.

Maybe it’s not because the writer deemed none of those announcements newsworthy… Read More

Tomorrow the State Legislature will reconvene. Despite the fact that California has a massive mega-billion dollar operating deficit, Democrats will once again start to introduce more bills to spend even more money. There must be a ten-step program for their addiction to spending other people’s money.

Less people participate in the obscure Iowa Caucus system than vote in many individual California counties. It’s clear that our Presidential nomination process is flawed when so much attention is paid to so few voters. Although this Iowa-thing probably is great for the obscure and heavily taxpayer subsidized ethanol industry.

After all is said and done, it looks like John McCain’s chances of pulling off an upset to get the GOP nomination will be cooked if he cannot pull off a win in New Hampshire’s primary next week. Too bad the McCain-Feingold legislation is making it so hard for him to raise money. There’s some irony there.

Speaking of the New Hampshire primary. It turns out that it falls on the same day (this Tuesday) that Governor Schwarzenegger is scheduled to give his State of the State Address. Historically, Governor’s… Read More

Tomorrow the State Legislature will reconvene. Despite the fact that California has a massive mega-billion dollar operating deficit, Democrats will once again start to introduce more bills to spend even more money. There must be a ten-step program for their addiction to spending other people’s money.

Less people participate in the obscure Iowa Caucus system than vote in many individual California counties. It’s clear that our Presidential nomination process is flawed when so much attention is paid to so few voters. Although this Iowa-thing probably is great for the obscure and heavily taxpayer subsidized ethanol industry.

After all is said and done, it looks like John McCain’s chances of pulling off an upset to get the GOP nomination will be cooked if he cannot pull off a win in New Hampshire’s primary next week. Too bad the McCain-Feingold legislation is making it so hard for him to raise money. There’s some irony there.

Speaking of the New Hampshire primary. It turns out that it falls on the same day (this Tuesday) that Governor Schwarzenegger is scheduled to give his State of the State Address. Historically, Governor’s… Read More

Ray Haynes was the author, in 1999, of the change in the California Republican Party Bylaws that has brought us the current system of Republican National Convention delegates being selected based on local results in each Congressional District. He pens this commentary in response to a criticism of this method that appeared Saturday in the San Diego Union Tribune.

California has screwed up the entire presidential primary system, simply to satisfy the political ambitions of its politicians, who really wanted to extend term limits, and what does the San Diego Union Tribune criticize? The Republican method of choosing its presidential delegates, a system which, by the way, is used by a majority of the states in this country.

It used to take six months to choose a presidential candidate, and those candidates who didn’t start out well funded or frontrunners had a chance to build momentum and create a… Read More

The next month we will be devoting quite a bit of time, including this opening commentary of the 2007 legislative session, to blasting Proposition 93 for the self-serving “big lie” that it happens to be. You have to try very, very hard to find a more shameful attempt to mock the voters of California than this initiative, which we have dubbed, “The Fabian Nunez/Don Perata Career Politician Term Limits Weakening Initiative…" We are calling this measure “The Big Lie” because proponents, including Senate President Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, have the audacity to try to lie to the voters by saying that Proposition 93 “strengthens” term limits – the exact opposite of what it does. While Perata and Nunez look you straight in the eye and tell you that this measure would “limit the total amount of time that an individual can serve in the legislature from 14 years to 12… Read More