Yesterday, I showed how California Government, currently under the control of Democrats, increases the cost of gasoline through taxes, fees, and regulation, all things that are under the control of the State Government. The majority in the Legislature and the Governor have created the high cost gasoline in California (all the while blaming oil companies for the actions of the politicians).

Today, we’ll talk about the cost of housing. Once again, the increasing cost of housing is created by massive housing shortages throughout the state, and those shortages are caused by government fees and regulations. So what is the majority blaming for the high cost of housing? Once again, they blame the private market, a market they have severely controlled and regulated.

I would like first to make this observation to put the housing issues in a context. The cost of housing plays only a minor role in the homelessness crisis in this state. The major causes of homelessness are mental illness and substance abuse. That is why the Democrats’ solutions to crisis, that is, to build homeless shelters and give the homeless money don’t work. The mentally ill… Read More

I have been out of the Legislature for over 16 years. That is only significant because after 8 years in the Legislatures, I started to notice that my Democrat colleagues in the majority during my time there spent a lot of time passing useless legislation, and ignoring the big problems of the state. My general speech against a bill would start “The freeways of California are too crowded, our schools are failing, our houses cost too much, and we are running out of water, out of gasoline, and out of electricity, yet here we are in the Legislature debating [insert stupid bill here].” I could give that same speech today, and be just as relevant as I was in 2002, 3, 4, 5, or 6. As just one small example, our Arrogant Lazy Authoritarian in Chief (the ALAIC) recently spent his time calling on private companies to attack the Florida Legislature over an education bill that focused on sex education for 5 year olds. ALAIC Newsom should worry about California schools failing California’s children, not Florida’s sex education curriculum. However, that means he would have to take on California’s teacher’s union, and since he is a wholly owned… Read More

Want to see the left wing media and its leftist followers completely bat guano crazy?

Just mention the “independent state legislature” doctrine that is gaining traction around the country.

Do that, and you will hear the left wing media cite a thousand constitutional “scholars” who will call you every kind of negative nickname they have ever assigned to conservatives in this country, and they will end with how dangerous you and anyone who thinks like you is to our Constitution and our Republic.

Simply stated, the independent state legislature doctrine says that the various state legislatures throughout the country are discrete sovereign units with functions specifically reserved to them by the Constitution. There are three main sources of that reservation of state sovereignty: (1) Article 1, Section 4 of the Constitution, which reserves to the states the power to determine the “time, place, and manner” of elections; (2) Article 2, Section 1 of the Constitution that reserves to the Legislature the power to determine the method of electing the President of the United States, and (3) the 10th Amendment, which reserves to… Read More

David Brooks had a rich pedigree on the conservative side of the ledger. He worked at the National Review, Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Weekly Standard. I ran into Bill Kristol and Brooks in 2003. Kristol crowed about how Brooks had just accepted a position at the New York Times. I congratulated him and stated, “It will be interesting to see whether you change them, or they change you.” We just got final confirmation. Brooks has a lengthy piece in the Atlantic entitled What Happened to American Conservatism? speaking to the history of his political perspective.

The fact this was published in the Atlantic tells one about everything you would expect regarding what he wrote. The publication was founded in 1857 and was originally the Atlantic Monthly. Times change and so has the publication. Current editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg has completed the transformation to a far-left rag that gives authors plenty of space to pontificate on their left-wing theories.

Brooks has authored some enlightened books on our society, but that was before his transformation. He wrote with great clarity then, but this lengthy piece was frequently muddled.… Read More

In politics it is said if you can put your opponent on the defensive, you are winning. If you are the target, it is better to ignore the accusations as they will have you dancing to the opposition’s tune. Occasionally, it is worthy of addressing one of these positions as is the case now with a reckless charge. Not only is it ridiculous to assert Republicans in any way favor Vladimir Putin but It is harmful to our country to make such charges while he is aggressively attacking his neighbor.

Let us address the comments about Putin as a leader. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has made favorable comments about Putin’s abilities. Steve Schmidt, a deeply confused former Republican, stated Pompeo is “a self-dealing blusterer whose grift, vanity and ambition has twisted him into a smiling shill for Vladimir Putin.” The crime here is making statements like the ones Biden made in 2019 regarding Putin.

In a 45-minute interview discussing a wide-ranging analysis of the situation with Russia and China, Pompeo said about Putin “Very shrewd. Very capable. I have enormous respect for him. I have been criticized for saying that. No, I have enormous… Read More

Rising inflation causes more and more people to expose their profound economic illiteracy. Recently I’ve been fascinated to read the Internet comments of otherwise intelligent people who think that the main cost of a sit-down restaurant meal is the food ingredients. Too many commenters think that the primary factor driving eatery prices up is the greed of the restaurant owners.

UPDATED WITH DECEMBER, 2021 STATE UNEMPLOYMENT RATES

California is the nation’s epicenter for the homeless problem. But ask yourself this question: IF todayyoufound yourself without both shelter and the funds to rent a place, what state would you most prefer to be in to “live under a bridge”? More specifically, what CITY would you rather be in?

Answer: California — and specifically San Diego, my town. Best homeless weather in the nation.

Solutions to this growing problem are not easy, as California politicians (and their voters) vigorously support an intentional policy to keep CA housing high priced and scarce — high priced BECAUSE it is scarce, and expensive to build. So what CAN be done to help these unfortunate people?

Let’s start by recognizing that there are two broad, sometimes overlapping categories of homeless people:

1. The “helpless” — the mentally ill, the druggies, the drunks (these are also overlapping categories) — those who have pretty much given up on — or are incapable of —… Read More

President Biden, no economic expert, wants to blame the high rate of inflation on the pandemic created shortages like computer chips stopping cars from being built. While supply chains were altered for a time and some products still have backlogs there are two major reasons that the inflation rate has accelerated to the highest it has been in two generations. Those two reasons are self-inflicted wounds, almost exclusively by Biden policies.

By far the most tangible one is the price of energy. It does not take much to figure out when you see the average price of an oil barrel – 2020 $39.68, 2021 $68.17 and 2022 $84.70. We don’t know where the average price in 2022 will end up for the year, but it is a good bet it will be north of the current figure – above $95.00.

American oil production went from 5,484,000 barrels in 2010 to 11,283,000 in 2020. Some of that growth came at the end of the Obama Administration due to private land fracking, but the figures really soared during the Trump era. Oil production dropped 1.1 million barrels in 2021. Natural gas production went from 22,381,873 million cubic feet in 2010 to 36,202,466 million cubic feet in 2020. Again,… Read More