It would seem that the more that a microscope is applied to the dealings of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, the more it shows a pattern — that absolute power does corrupt absolutely. One can probably figure that at some point Nunez was, well, like the rest of us. You know, work hard and don’t take anything for granted? But at some point, or maybe slowly over time, the big gavel of being the Assembly Speaker has gone to the man’s head.

CHARITY-GATE Just after weeks of articles and investigative reports into the lavish and expensive expenditures from Nunez’ campaign coffers that appear to be supporting a lifestyle otherwise unattainable for a public servant, now the Los Angeles Times has revealed a startling and disturbing pattern… Read More

There is a report in the Sacramento Bee today that Art Torres, Chair of the California Democratic Party, is claiming that the "California Counts" initiative, which would reform California’s apportionment of electoral college votes to recognize regional diversity and make our state relevant again in Presidential elections, is unconstitutional. That position is a bunch of baloney.

Long established U.S. Supreme Court case law (see Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355 (1931) and Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U.S. 565 (1911) ) provide strong logic and support for the initiative. Those cases establish rock-solid support for the proposition that the word "legislature" in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, dealing with apportionment of Congressional districts for election purposes, includes the lawmaking process in the state as determined by its particular "polity." In these cases, "legislature" in Article 1 was interpreted to include not only the state legislature itself, but the full lawmaking process, including the Governor’s veto, and the people’s power of referendum.

In… Read More

A couple legislative races in California appear to be over before the filing deadline. On the other side of the aisle they have a couple races that fall into this category.

One of them is San Francisco County Supervisor Tom Ammiano. At the last reporting period he had $151,067 in the bank and most every major endorsement in the city he could want.

He is the only candidate to file a statement of intent to tun for the seat. The people in San Francisco tell me that some groups would like to find someone to run against him but they realize that it is a losing cause in the end.

This guy is the classic urban liberal that is active in every major issue in his city. With the voting history of this part of the state he is actually a good it for the district. Senator Migden and Assemblyman Leno don’t seem to agree on much lately — except that Ammiano should be in the Assembly.

You may not know him now but you will when he… Read More

We’ve all been reading about the negative impacts all around the United States as a tremendous number of people are going into default on their sub-prime home loans, and they say that the situation is likely to get worse. Millions of American families seem to have overextended themselves, getting into interest-only variable rate loans that are now coming back to bite them as their short-term low rate is now adjusting to a higher one. Clearly many of these folks taking out these sub=prime loans were the victims of predatory lending practices by the "used car salesman" class of mortgage brokers, and many others still are regreting their efforts to ‘game the system’ as rates go up. California being the largest state in the nation, we are the most-impacted by this situation.

Believe it or not, some are advocating a taxpayer bailout for all of these subprime lending companies, and for those who took risks on this loans. Of course, such a bailouot would mean that all Americans are paying the price for the imprudent decisions made by some. Completely unfair.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore recently published a column in the Orange County… Read More

Fox News called and told me that our school district was the only school district in Los Angeles and maybe California that used Homeland Security’s E-Verify Program to insure that we were hiring those legally allowed to work in the United States.

After one year here are the results:

Four classified people had unverified results. After having the employees go to the Social security administration, all 4 were cleared. Some of the problems were obvious. (A different middle initial on their Social Security Card and their I-9 Employment Verification Form).

Two certificated employees had problems. One cleared immediately and the second employee did not have a valid work permit and was terminated.

While the last employee was here legally, the person didn’t have a valid work permit. The sad news is that the terminated employee could have gone next door to another school district and been hired.

Fox News found only 9 governmental agencies that used the Free E-Verify system. Why can’t government make sure only people that can work legally work for the government?… Read More

The London Telegraph has been running an interesting rundown over the last several days of the Top-100 most influential liberals and conservativesin America.

There was theusual rundown of names on our side of the ideological divide, even if some popped up in surprising spots:

Former Reagan Scribe Peggy Noonan – #83 Frequent Golden Pen Recipient Thomas Sowell – #64 Justice Antonin Scalia – #62 Writer PJ O’Rourke – #60 National Review Founder William F. Buckley – #49 Former Bush Brain Karl Rove – #42 Fox News Leader Roger Ailes – #23 President Bush – #21 (How relevant is the President when he can’t crack the top 20) Chief Justice John Roberts – #8 Talk Show Host Rush Limbaugh – #5 Web News King (Sorry Jon) – Matt Drudge – #3 Former New York Mayor Rudy G (He’s a Conservative?) – #1

I list all of these out for a reason… stick with me.

On the Lefty side, the list starts with a who’s who in Clinton-land of… Read More

I went to Sacramento to protect Proposition 13 and fight against tax increases. I take that commitment very seriously – and I’m proud of my record.

Soimagine my surprise when I read yesterday that on the newly released Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association legislative report card I received an embarrassing (and pathetic) 78.4 score, which is a grade of "B". Which also was the worst score of any Republican in either house.

I was stunned – and very, very concerned.

I love the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. They do great work and are one of the most important organizations in California. To be the worst Republican on their report card……yikes.

HJTA is so important to me – and this score was so inconsistent with my voting record over 13 years we started researching how this anomaly happened. We found what I believe is a scoring system that – while good intentioned – punishes you if you’re not available to vote – even if you’re sick, in my case, absent because you are recovering from… Read More

The complete political spectrum is dining at Spattaro Restaurant close to the State Capitol. The forces of good are gathered in the light of day, on the patio (that would be me, and Kevin Spillane and Bob Adney from the pro-Term Limits crew. In the darkness of the depths of the restauarant would be the other group, which for ID purposes we’ll call Evil*. Speaker Nunez, Steve Maviglio, Darry Sragow et al.

* this label is a convenient identifier, not a statement of moral assessment.… Read More