I was taken aback by the positive reaction by many members of the Press who were excited when the Biden Administration announced they were going to resume daily press briefings. Why would they want to listen to a hand-picked flack disgorging half-baked answers about subjects on which they are barely enlightened?

Say what you will about President Trump; he was ever accessible to the Press. He took on every question from the WH press corps and only left when he was being rushed off to do other presidential matters. Many in the Press asked him snarky questions because of their defined distaste for him, but at least they were getting answers directly from the elected President. It was hoped that Trump had redefined access to our elected officials and transparency from our government.

It seems like with this President who refuses to engage the Press unless in highly scripted manner that we really have President Psaki. Except she spends most her time obfuscating. Here is a hint on life: when a politician comes into office and talks about how transparent their administration is going to be, bet the house that it will be the exact opposite.

President Psaki is… Read More

If someone got a map of California and overlaid the state’s high-risk wildfire severity zones one would have an outline of all developable land in California. In other words, the state’s entire inventory of developable land is one big high-risk wildfire severity zone.

Let’s face it, most of California is a desert. Excluding the areas in and around the heavily wooded forests of the northern state, Californians dwell in either farm land or are urban dwellers – and mostly the latter. Indeed, less than six percent of the land area is populated by humans.

So, lawsuits against two developments in wildfire zones in San Diego County (“the County”) are, taken together, litigation against all development across California and are profoundly anti-growth.

This fact didn’t stop state Attorney General Xavier Bercerra. Earlier this month – as one of his last official acts as AG (last week Bercerra was confirmed by the Senate as President Biden’s Secretary of Health and Human Services) – he joined in the lawsuits, siding with the plaintiffs, on behalf of California.

While we Californians are primarily city folk, we have over the last 150… Read More

Until I was 15 and moved to Southern California, I delivered newspapers for five years. Every day I came home with hands stained from printer’s ink. It is in my blood. I wore it with pride. I still receive the Wall Street Journal in print form and will until I die, or it dies. Most of my other news is delivered to my inbox every day. While reading something the other day, I looked at it and said to myself “I don’t believe a word you are saying.” Pseudo-journalists have greatly harmed our news sources. Let’s review why so many people think like I do.

News people have enlisted many practices that have destroyed their credibility:

Experts – If they dislike the position taken by someone, be it a political or business leader, they bring out the “experts.” “Experts say that blah, blah, blah.” When did we get to this point? Nameless, faceless experts. When you read a column like that sourcing nameless people — people that are unwilling to go on the record — you know the writer is either lazy or lying. If the “expert” is worthy but unwilling to go on record to establish the virtue of their positions, then they are not credible.… Read More

In this message, it is important that Free America understand the failure of government that is our autocracy here in California-.

It has now been a year since California’s Arrogant Lazy Authoritarian In Chief (ALAIC) Gavin Newsom (ALL HAIL OUR GLORIOUS LEADER) issued his lockdown order, allegedly designed to “flatten the curve” on the spread of the corona virus disease. Let’s assess the effect of that order:

Lockdown of Churches: An Unconstitutional Fail. An Intrusion on the Freedom of People to Exercise Their Religion. All this illegal act did was intrude on religious freedom. It completely failed to stem the spread of the disease;

Lockdown of Schools: An Epic Fail. This lockdown deprived an entire generation of California school children of a valuable year of education at a critical time in their development. Teachers and Education bureaucrats got paid, taxpayers got ripped off, parents had to figure out how to earn a living while their children laid around the house staring at their computers, acting like they were paying attention, while some teachers acted like they were actually trying… Read More

A few years back, I posited a scenario about California’s future if the effort to secede from the United States had succeeded. It was set in 2030, and described a decrepit and decaying California, destroyed by the collectivist mindset of its political leaders. These autocrats built a wall around California, except along the Mexican border (that would have been racist), to prevent Californians from leaving. I have taken to calling it the “Sierra Wall”, since it would be built on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and would lock Californians into the socialist dystopia engineered by the leftist political leaders that currently run California.

California is close to that dystopian future now. The elected officials in California are authoritarians, quite willing to use the political power the people have leased to them to punish their opponents as criminals, and let the real criminals go free. The political press, with few exceptions, is little more than a propaganda machine for the California political elite (since investigative journalism is passe, it seems), and that elite has little or no problem corralling the citizens with… Read More

I have known and liked Kevin Muldoon for many years. I had always considered Muldoon to be a committed conservative activist, standing tall on issues when others would fade into the background. I was pleased to play a role in helping Muldoon get elected to the Newport Beach City Council. That said, it turns out I didn’t really know Kevin, or at least I didn’t know about an important character flaw of Kevin’s until these last couple of months.

Kevin cares only about Kevin. Narcissism is a trait that serves nobody well. And it can hurt our communities badly at those times when politics needs to be a team sport in order to win.

That character flaw is the single greatest factor in ultra-liberal Katrina Foley winning last week’s special election for Orange County’s Supervisor. And the worst part is, Kevin knew before he filed that he could not win. Let me walk you through the past few months to explain.

Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel started running for Congress shortly after the ink was dry on Harley Rouda’s certificate of election, after Rouda defeated long-time Congressman Dana Rohrabacher in 2018. She was termed out of her… Read More

An excellent SAN DIEGO U-T article details a study of the TOTAL gasoline taxes paid by Californians. It costs more than even I realized. We are the highest gas tax state — even higher than tax-crazed Hawaii.

The study concludes that thetotalCA gas tax currently is $1.19 a gallon. But according to my calculations, it’s even more. Included are some arcane taxes and mandates disguised as “fees.”

EXCERPT: • The federal government charges an excise tax of 18.4 cents per gallon.

• Plus, there’s a state sales tax. It can vary by area but the Stillwater analysis estimated the sales tax averages 10.7 cents per gallon. Put together, Californians pay 79.6 cents per gallon in gas taxes.

Now for thefeesNoda says are often overlooked:

• Underground Storage Tank fee of 2 cents per… Read More

California legislators rarely meet the test of being “profiles in courage” – at least not formally. Just the opposite is more typical. Voting behavior of state lawmakers isn’t at all courageous. Data shows that votes are cast only after they are okayed by a preferred special interest or the particular House leadership.

That changed with the arrival of Bob Hertzberg in the state Senate. In time he took on the state’s really big issues. Right or wrong, he seized on California’s major problems, focusing on winning bi-partisan solutions.

Hertzberg, a Democrat, didn’t immediately fit the profile-in-courage standard, though. He was not a purposeful contrarian or a Party maverick – nearly all of his votes went the direction his leadership set for their caucuses. And, his first effort to push major legislation was a flop.

Consider that a few years back, Hertzberg dared take on the entire business community in California by issuing a report on the state sales tax. In the report, the junior member of the Senate advocated that private businesses and real estate enterprises pay a new tax, based on sales.

With the introduction of… Read More