Suppose you are offered a bargain on a pair of well-made shoes. You can have the new footwear at half price. The catch? They don’t fit and the discount is partially paid for through your tax dollars.

This is the kind of deal the public is being offered on some alternative energy vehicles. It is estimated that the Chevy Volt costs General Motors as much as $89,000 to manufacture, while it sells for $39,995. But the actual cost to the consumer is further reduced after a $7,500 federal income tax credit, and for California residents, another rebate of $2,500 from the state.

The Volt was introduced in 2010, with much ballyhoo, as the first plug-in U.S. hybrid. But Chevy has sold barely 20,000 vehicles. The public remains skeptical about this and other plug-in vehicles that take hours to charge, have short range and are served by few public charging stations. These cars don’t look… Read More

The impressive victory of conservative rancher Andy Vidak in the recent State Senate special election in the Central Valley’s 16th District gives the State Capitol’s other 36 Republican legislators a reason to be unified, focused and determined as they return to Sacramento for the five week or so final sprint to the end of the 2013 session. Come the next session in January, Democrats should go into the year with full super-majority complements of 28 State Senators and 55 Assemblymembers. But for the rest of this session, Democrats will barely have a two-thirds majority in the Senate, and will not have it at all in the Assembly.

In the State Senate, due to the election of Curren Price to the Los Angeles City Council, there will be a vacancy that won’t be filled until September 17. In the State Assembly there are two vacancies. With the election of Norma Torres to the State Senate, her Assembly seat will not be filled until a special election, also on September 17. Also, with the election of Bob Blumenfield to the L.A. City Council, his Assembly seat will not be filled until November 17. None of these vacancies will be filled before this… Read More

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Conservatives are conservatives because they want to conserve cultural, social, and political things. The last thing they want to hear, when their movement is at a low point, is someone suggesting a new idea, particularly if the idea is perceived as moderating conservatism. The typical response is, “We don’t need something new, we must stick to the rock solid core principles of conservatism.”

They should heed the words of Walt Whitman who, after America was founded, wrote, “The architects of These States laid their foundations, and passed to further spheres. What they laid is a work done; as much more remains. Now are needed other architects, whose duty is not less difficult, but perhaps more difficult…..America is not finished, perhaps never will be; now America is a divine true sketch.”

Conservatives in America don’t need a new idea; they need a new architect to render a new plan for America and usher in a new American era based on conservative principles cast in new light. This light will reveal the next steps in the long historical march to freedom that America has been privileged to be a part.

The new plan must be enlightened and built… Read More

Despite Gov. Brown’s bold claims about a balanced budget, California still has yet to address the questions surrounding the state’s unfunded pension liabilities. As of the end of 2010, California’s state and local pension obligations in the Golden State were estimated at a soul-crushing half-trillion dollars and steadily increasing each day. However, despite the best attempts of Sacramento lawmakers to avoid dealing with the state’s enormous unfunded pension liability, the public is about to get a better sense of just how dire the situation really is thanks to increased transparency.

… Read More

Apparently the Obamacare legislation signed by it’s namesake says that Members of Congress and their staff have to obtain their health care coverage through the same state-level health-care exchanges and anyone participating in the program. (See the article.) I would love to see Congress try to get by passing a law somehow eliminating or mitigating this requirement and explain to the American people why what’s good for everyone else isn’t good for those working under the Capitol Dome.… Read More

Last week yet another missive on the lessons to be learned from Detroit’s bankruptcy was published, this time in Forbes Magazine by Jeffrey Dorfman, an economist at the University of Georgia. Dorfman’s article, “Detroit’s Bankruptcy Should Be A Warning To Every Worker Expecting A Pension, Or Social Security,” clearly implies that future Social Security benefits are as financially imperiled as public sector pensions.

This is patently false, and spreading this falsehood has dangerous consequences.

Not only are the financial adjustments necessary to fix Social Security far easier to implement than what it’s going to take to rescue public sector pensions, but the sheer size of the public sector pension liability is actually bigger than the total liability for the entire Social Security fund. It is imperative that American voters understand this fact.

In the United States today about 20% of workers are employed by the government (or public utilities that offer benefits on par with… Read More

Dateline Chicago – Mayor warns property taxes could be going up 150%.

Suppose the mayor of your city announced a property tax hike of 150% or, stated another way, two and half times your current tax. A homeowner accustomed to paying $2,000, would see their next bill increase to $5,000, while a bill of $4,000 would jump to $10,000. Coincidentally, these amounts roughly approximate the average property tax rate in California just prior to Proposition 13’s passage in 1978 – a tax burden so high many homeowners were forced out of their homes.

An increase of this magnitude may sound farfetched, but not to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who is seriously warning that in order to pay the mounting bill for government employee pensions — a bill that will triple in 2015 when a balloon payment comes due — property taxes could be forced to go up 150%. Needless to say, Chicago… Read More

Today, the Marin County Republican Party issued apress release announcing their support for same-sex marriage. The press releasestates that this vote was taken as part of the adoption of a broad three-year strategic plan to revitalize the Republican Party in Marin County.

If revitalizing the Marin GOP is their goal, formally adopting a pro-same-sex marriage position is foolish for several reasons. First, such a position directly conflicts with the official California Republican Party Platform. The CRP Platform states as part of the section on the family, “we support the two-parent family as the best environment for raising children, and therefore believe it is important to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.” What this means is that if a rank-and-file Republican voter in Marin calls the state party headquarters inquiring about where the GOP stands on marriage, he will get one answer, but if he calls the county party headquarters, he will get another… Read More