Please note that these are my remarks as I prepared them for a recent speech.

I understand why people ask me to speak at events like this. I’m an elected official in Woodland that some people identify with the time I spent in Iraq with the Marine Corps.

Yet, these sorts of things are the hardest things that I do as an elected official.

My worst days as Mayor involved the deaths of SSGT Jimmy Arroyave and Highway Patrol Officer Andy Stevens. Giving condolences to family members is not something I am good at…. But all you can do is try.

I was at a Veterans event in Davis when Vince asked me to speak today. Clearly Vince has a memory problem. Two years ago when I was the Veteran’s Day speaker at the Court House I completely lost my composure as I spoke in front of the family of PFC Casillas.

PFC Casillas was a soldier from Arbuckle that was killed in Afghanistan. A hero. Watching his family mourn his loss was not the sort of thing I would wish on anyone. It got me. It got all of those around them.

These things are hard for me. Very hard. I know they are hard for many… Read More

While I’m not adding this electricity cost analysis to my dreary “Breaking Bad: CA vs. the Other States” fact sheet (this analysis is a hard item to condense into one sentence), it’s a situation my California readers need to understand. Our state’s residential electricity rates often are outrageous compared to the rest of the nation. And under AB32, these rates are predicted to go up as much as 30% or more — while the other states didn’t chose to commit such “cap and trade” economic suicide.

BTW, our state’s industrial electricity rates are even higher compared to other states — 59.8% higher than the national average as of December, 2011.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html . But this article will dwell on the cost of electricity for our homes.

For comparison purposes, I’m ranking homes with an average monthly usage of 1,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) — a common utility industry benchmark. I suspect that this usage level may be above average for a California home (we… Read More

It’s that time. Make your picks. Pick your seats. Will your picks be seated?

The rules:

Read the questions closely. No tricks, just read the durn questions. Send guesses to info@sdrostra.com ONLY. The Rostra peeps are assisting on this, so don’t send to my email. Do NOT post your answers here (you know who you are). Deadline to submit guesses: Election Day — Tuesday, June 5, 2012 — High Noon. No exceptions. That’s Pacific Time. If you’re reading this onFlashReportand don’t follow San Diego politics, don’t complain. Just DON’T ANSWER. See the title of a Milton Friedman book. I can’t ask about every race. Some of them don’t get interesting until the General. Deal. In the case of any close races (see Juan Vargas-Mary Salas 2010), the contest winner may not be determined until the chad are counted, the cows make it home, and/or any litigation follows its course. Yes, the plural of chad is chad.

The Questions:

1.San Diego City Council District 5 — NAME the winner. This is a… Read More

I mentioned in Episode V that infrastructure is important to secure and grow manufacturing. In fact, it is essential. You must be able to transmit energy, move goods and services, and have access to water and internet and all kinds of things in order to have an efficient manufacturing process. Regardless of what you are producing, infrastructure is key. And, at the risk of adding to the overusage of this trite phrase, our infrastructure is crumbling. One needs only to drive one’s car in Washington, DC or Los Angeles, California (as I do frequently) to feel that infrastructure crumbling beneath your tires. Our support systems in DC, LA, or wherever you live are in bad shape because the priorities for federal spending have shifted over the last 50 years. Social programs now eat up the bulk of government spending at the federal, state, and local levels. The cost of these social programs crowds out what used to be spent on infrastructure. In some cases, taxes or fees that were sold as “user fees” to pay for infrastructure have been diverted for social programs or used to try to maintain exorbitant government employee pensions. My home state of California has… Read More

The old political saying,”pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered,” may never be more true than in the upcoming election cycle. While its no secret that labor unions have had a run of the Capitol for a generation, a recent political development illustrates just how out of touch and blinded they are to what’s happening in the state — and the jeopardy it puts them in on their fight this fall against both the Stop Special Interest Money Now ballot measure and the Governor’s measure to hike income and sales taxes.

It all started a couple weeks ago when my friend Steve Maviglio – the Democrat political consultant and former adviser to Gray Davis and Fabian Nunez – reached out to give me a heads up on the California Forward budget reform initiative that is about to qualify for the November ballot.

Steve was letting me know that a little known provision in the measure would allow two things that conservatives should be very worried about — first, he said he had a memo written by Speaker John Perez office saying it would allow local governments to both undo key provisions of Prop 13 AND allow for local tax increases without… Read More

I guess we’ve shocked the world or something, but it is true, the Lincoln Club of Fresno County has endorsed a yes position on Proposition 28. The reasons are simple. First, we are all about results and measurement of the aftermath of laws. California, in every way, is worse off today than before we had term limits. Every single metric. Now, we know that this is not solely because of term limits, but we firmly believe that we are simply turning over dimwit Democrat elected officials with more and even bigger dimwit elected officials under the current system. Why should we care whether their dimwits are there for six or twelve years? Second, we believe the California Republican Party must change its purpose. It is no longer, under its current structure, as relevent as it needs to be. This is in part due to its dependence on legislative leaders for fundraising and direction. The rapid turnover of GOP legislators does not allow for any continuity in Party operations and fundraising – or purpose. Third, we are hoping that an aggressive set of newly elected GOP legislators will consider a wholesale revision of the CRP’s operations, from… Read More

Over the weekend the modern conservative movement lost one of its most thoughtful, articulate and visionary leaders. After a valiant battle against cancer in his body, Tom Fuentes passed away at the age of 63.

Though Tom was a leader in many organizations and groups, he was certainly most well known for his passionate and capable leadership at the helm of the Orange County Republican Party as its chairman for two decades, from 1984 through 2004.

Tom’s friend Bruce Herschensohn wrote in a heart-felt column currently appearing on the Human Events website, “If Tom had never lived, most people in the country would not have heard of Orange County. Most Americans can’t name many counties. They can name states and major cities, but not many counties, maybe not even their own. But one county is well known all over the nation and even in many other parts of the world: Orange County, California…”

Truer words could not have been said, as Tom’s leadership of the GOP helped to make Orange County the most Republican County in the nation.

I know that a great many people were… Read More

Kathy Tavoularis passed along this message last night…

It is with an incredibly heavy heart and with great sadness to report thatThomas A. Fuentes passed away peacefully at 11:55 p.m. on Friday, May 18,2012 at his home in Lake Forest, California.

Tom is survived by his wife Jolene, daughter Michelle and sons Tj and Joey.

As many of you know, Tom had a successful liver transplant years ago.Unfortunately, late last year cancer returned to his new liver and spreadto his lungs and lymphatic system and eventually invaded the bronchialtubes of the lungs.

The Funeral Service and Reception for Family and Friends is being arranged.I will send you exact locations and times as soon as possible.

The family asks for your prayers for Tom. Per their request, please do notcall or email them at this time.

For those who prefer to send a donation Tom wished to designate theCarmelites Sisters of Alhambra and the Norbertines at St. Michael’s Abbeyas the recipients of donations in his memory. … Read More