While the controversy will continue to rage about President Barack Obama’s decision to address school children.

I am stunned not by the obvious attempt to look great or indoctrinate young people. Don’t get me wrong all those things are important and clearly this is his attempt to reach young people and their voting parents with an “important message” of stay in school and work hard. As long as he is mentioning stuff, clean your room should be added to the list.

Yes, it is a waste of instructional time etc…

But what bothers me is trying to figure out this question.

Does Barack Obama believe he has the power to change the culture of students by giving a speech?

There is no doubt that Presidents can be inspirational. John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and others have proved that,.

In some cases I think a half hour from Sponge Bob (my son picked him over Obama) or a song from Adam Lambert (my daughter says he is cooll) would be more effective with dealing with a culture than a speech by a man that had to overcome graduating from such horrible schools like Columbia and Harvard or even the private schools in Hawaii or Indonesia he… Read More

Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, and Jon Fleischman, Publisher of the FlashReport Website on California Politics, this morning released the following statement to the State Legislature concerning ongoing discussions to achieve a solution to our state’s water crisis that the legislature would then place before the voters of California…

"As the Governor and state legislators work earnestly with a goal of pulling together a “comprehensive water solution package” to potentially bring before the full legislature this week, we believe that the frame of mind of those… Read More

As we reported last week, today the Committee to Recall Anthony Adams will turn in around 40,000 signatures to registrars of voters in both Los Angeles and San Bernardino County. In order for a recall election to be called against Adams there will ultimately need to be about 36,000 valid signatures of voters from the 59th Assembly District turned in. (The media event will be this afternoon at the Los Angeles County Registrar, headed up by Recall Adams leader and former State Senator Dick Mountjoy.)

The recall against Adams is taking place over his deciding vote to increase state income, sales and car taxes by billions — actually it was the largest tax increase ever at the state level in any state in the history of America. Adams took a pledge not to raise taxes in his critical first primary… Read More

A few weeks ago, the organization California Forward sent a letter to the Governor and members of the State Legislature outlining what they believe to be a series of reforms that, if passed, would improve the condition of government here in California. You can see that letter here (h/t KQED).

Many of the reforms have merit, a few are more questionable — all deserve closer examination.

But for the purposes of this commentary, I am focused on what would be, for me, a "deal killer" when it comes to "reforms" — and that is a proposal to severely weaken California’s legislative term limits, placed into the State Constitution back in 1990. Three times now, most recently with Proposition 93, the political-class have sought to undo in some part what the voters put into place — and all three times their efforts have been rejected.

Under the "reform" proposed by California Forward, while an individual currently is limited, in their lifetime, to serving three terms in the State Assembly and two terms in the State Senate,… Read More

We’ve had hardcore left-wing U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer representing California for so long that it is almost startling to hear the common sense that comes from some of the Senators from states not on the "left coast — such as Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Check out this video below from a townhall meeting where Coburn engages a constituent in a dialogue after she asks for a show of hands of how many people in the room support a "public option" for government run healthcare.

Oh yes, of note is that Coburn’s profession — medical doctor. … Read More

<object width="399" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="399"></embed></object>

LOVE BOAT

<object width="399" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-QFfciwRqaU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always"… Read More

Just off the transom from the Committee to Recall Anthony Adams…

On Tuesday, September 8th at 3:00PM, The Committee to Recall Anthony Adams along with Recall Proponents will submit over 36,000 signatures to the Registrar of Voters Office, 12400 Imperial Hwy. in Norwalk, Ca. “This is a proud day for the over-burdened taxpayers of the great State of California,” said campaign spokesman, Mike Schroeder. Adams broke his campaign promise to never to raise taxes. Adams relied heavily upon this promise to win election to the Assembly. He then voted to double the… Read More

What is going on in the Assembly Republican caucus? Have they lost their minds? The Senate passed the Healthy Families bill, a bill with a tax increase in it, with Republican help, which was foolish enough. One Senator said he just couldn’t see "children losing their health care." He couldn’t have articulated the Democrat argument for any tax increase better. But the Assembly caucus voted overwhelmingly for the thing. Are they nuts?

I will start with one observation. I was one of 5 Senators who voted against the Healthy Families bill in 1997. Healthy Families is the California version of the so-called State Child Health Insurance program (S-CHIP) which was passed by the national government (with a Republican majority in Congress) in those days. The reason given for passage at the time was that the federal government had to do something about the uninsured children out there. So-they passed a program where the federal government paid for two-thirds of a subsidized health insurance program (with the state picking up the other one-third) for the so-called working poor, those poor workers whose employers were too cheap to buy health… Read More