Few blacks get elected outside of African-American neighborhoods. The last and only black Republican assemblyman was Frederick Roberts (pictured below, left), in the AD 62, Los Angeles, [1918 to 1934]. Roberts was the first black to serve in any California state office.

Abram Wilson is the Republican nominee in AD 15. Wilson was elected as San Ramon’s first Mayor in 2003. He competedfor the Guy Houston seat against several other well financed challengers.Three candidates… Read More

Sometimes they’re easy. A bill comes to the floor and you just instinctively know how you will vote. Either it’s something you’ve always supported or always opposed or the bill is just clear-cut.

Such was not the case this week with the Housing Bill (H.R. 3221). This bill has been cooking all year and there were lots of moving pieces. In the end, it was over 700 pages long and was a grab bag of housing, regulatory and tax provisions. Some of these provisions I supported. Others I opposed viscerally. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do. So, I broke out the major provisions of the bill into the categories of things I hated, things I was okay with and things that could go either way. Here is how I saw those things:

Provisions I can’t stand:

The bill requires that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contribute 4.2 basis points of each new mortgage they make to an "affordable housing trust fund." This is a nearly $1 billion per year "slush fund" that would go primarily to organizations and community development agencies to promote low-income housing. This is just a huge handout to a small number of … Read More

I’m on vacation, but this one jumped out at me….

Copley Press explores sale… Read More

Readers know I am not a big fan of most campaign finance laws, but the decision of Federal prosecutors to insist on a felony charge for alleged money-laundering by Los Angeles trial lawyer and Democrat activist Pierce O’Donnell is the right thing to do.

The Times reports today that O’Donnell faces money-laundering charges for reimbursing people for making contributions to John Edwards 2004 Presidential campaign. In my personal view, that in itself does not support a felony case against a first-timer, but there are least three other factors that I believe justify the federal grand jury indictment and a felony case against O’Donnell if he is found guilty:

1. This is not O’Donnell’s first brush with money-laundering charges. As the Times article indicates, O’Donnell took a misdemeanor plea for money-laundering in connection with former Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn’s first successful race for Mayor in 2001. That was a protracted procedure that started almost three years before the money-laundering activities alleged on behalf of Edwards. That is a "first… Read More

Jon asked me to comment on the debate over the "water" bond currently being proposed in the Legislature. Since there really is no water bond being proposed, the debate is a false one. We are already in a water crisis it is true. Democrats have done nothing to alleviate that crisis since sometime in Jerry Brown administration in the 70’s, that is true as well. About 6 bonds have passed since 1996 claiming to be water bonds, and they got Republican votes to get on the ballot because somewhere in the language of the bond, someone wrote the word water. Not one ounce of new water was created by any of those bonds, and not ounce of water will be created by the currently proposed bond. Simply calling a bond a "water" bond does not make it so. California needs new water, California needs it now, and nothing is being done about it, not by the administration, not by the Democrats, and not by those Republicans who insist that we have a "water" bond that doesn’t create an ounce of water.

Let’s start with a critical premise. A water bond that has above ground storage can be a revenue bond (which does not require a vote… Read More

Apparently there is a crowd of state employees holding a rally at the State Capitol, unhappy with the impending action by Governor Terminator to axe 20,000 positions and take 200,000 other state employees down to the federal minimum wage (with full repayment of missed income after the budget is passed).

I would like to direct all of these folks here, where you can get lots of ideas on how to streamline and reduce the size of California government, back to a level sustainable by revenues. This will faciliate a speedy end to the budget stalement that we have right now.

Remind the politicians in the Capitol that state spending is up like 40% over the past few years, and that it is outrageous that they have outstripped growth in state revenues by that much.

As for me, I’ll call up my State Senator this afternoon. I would think we should eliminate non-vital components of state government, and I will suggest one to him. Perhaps placing before voters an end to the Coastal Commission. That’s a great place to start!

In the meantime, you should ask your union (who takes money out of each of your paychecks)… Read More

Jon asked me to comment on the debate over the "water" bond currently being proposed in the Legislature. Since there really is no water bond being proposed, the debate is a false one. We are already in a water crisis it is true. Democrats have done nothing to alleviate that crisis since sometime in Jerry Brown administration in the 70’s, that is true as well. About 6 bonds have passed since 1996 claiming to be water bonds, and they got Republican votes to get on the ballot because somewhere in the language of the bond, someone wrote the word water. Not one ounce of new water was created by any of those bonds, and not ounce of water will be created by the currently proposed bond. Simply calling a bond a "water" bond does not make it so. California needs new water, California needs it now, and nothing is being done about it, not by the administration, not by the Democrats, and not by those Republicans who insist that we have a "water" bond that doesn’t create an ounce of water.

Let’s start with a critical premise. A water bond that has above ground storage can be a revenue bond (which does not require a vote… Read More

A friend of mine won’t eat shrimp unless she knows its country of origin. This is because she heard that some chicken farms in China place their mesh-bottomed coups over shrimp ponds, feeding the shrimp with chicken droppings. Another friend of mine deadpanned “What’s wrong with that? They’re reducing their Carbon Footprint.”

Since liberals fear Al Gore-style global warming hype more than even terrorism, and they control the legislative and bureaucratic halls of government, the regulatory regime is seriously on the move at both the federal and state level to as much as triple the cost of every product, service or activity.

In fact, the federal EPA and the California Air Resources Board this week issued draft regulations that shed considerable light upon the brave new world where government would exponentially increase the cost of every product or service and control everything from landfills to lawnmowers.

According to Jeremy J. Broggi, Associate Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, the President in April “warned that the Clean Air Act and other existing statutes were the wrong way to address climate change, as… Read More