I just got back from a Ray Haynes for State Board of Equalization fundraiser at the Wilson Creek Winery, home of the delightful tasting almondchampagne, in Temecula (as way of disclosure, I… Read More

Yesterday I wrote about 36th Assembly District GOP challengerJames Ledford’s support for Deomcrats tripling the car tax. See it here.Now a Democratic activist is in trouble for supporting him for Mayor. But, that isn’t all. The article says he supported the Democratic activist for school board. "Corrales and Ledford are known to support each other…" reports the Antelope Valley Press. See the article here. Supporting the car tax AND supporting Democratic Partyactivists for office. Instead of challenging Runner in the GOP Primary, he should have been her Democratic opponent.… Read More

This morning the FlashReport included a link to the OC Register indicating that the Orange County Registrar was likely to affirm Tom Harman’s slim victory in SD 35. That has come to pass. Final tallies from the recount instituted by challenger Diane Harkey showed Harkey picking up 11 votes. You can read Wisckol’s post here.… Read More

This morning over 100 of Orange County’s Republican local elected officials came together in Anaheim for the first in a what promises to be a series of quarterly events for the OC GOP’s local elected officials committee.

Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle spoke to the crowd at the Disney Resort property about innovation in government including some key examples of what he has done in his town.

Pringle along with his coalition majority on the five-member city council has done some great things since they got there a little over three years ago.

The mix of a dynamic real estate market and a city government that virtually got out of the way of developers, has brought what will in the coming years be close to 10,000 new residential high-rise units to the area surrounding Anaheim Stadium that is now largely one and two story industrial.

Other great ideas that Pringle has actually implemented include:

-A tax holiday for businesses. If during a special three month period last year you moved or opened a new business in Anaheim your taxes were waived for a year. And if you were late on paying your taxes, you were able to get caught up without… Read More

The Senate is poised to further limit local government’s power to have a say in the location of cellular infrastructure. SB 1627 (Kehoe) has recently cleared the Senate’s Policy Committee and would allow wireless telecommunications companies to collocate their wireless facilities on a non-discretionary basis. Last weekSB 1627 waspassed out of the Senate Environmental Committee. It will now proceed to the Senate Appropriations Committee. The bill would pre-empt local government authority to regulate collocation.

Over the years state legislation and state and federal court rulings have cut away at local government’s power to regulate the aesthetic and environmental effects of cellular infrastructure.… Read More

The San Francisco Chronicle ran a story the other day that reported that DJs on Spanish radio stations were counseling immigrants not to miss work, but rather attend marches and rallies after working. Some immigrant activists are worried about a backlash of anger.

They are right to be worried. On Tuesday, President Bush told an audience in Orange County that the debate about immigration needs to be conducted in a "respectful way." That message needs to be sent to parties on both sides of the issue. One gets the feeling that Bush and his soft-on-immigration counterparts think that those who want more border control are the only ones… Read More

MAY 1 PROTESTS Sometimes, when I am up early compiling news stories, I really shake my head. Today is one of those days. On May 1st, there will be a huge day of rallies to, in essence, support illegal immigration into the United States. You can say anything else you want about it, but the bottom line is that advocates of this day of protest are actually protesting the rule of law. They are protesting the idea that there is actually such a thing as right and wrong. It is fair to engage in a dialogue with the people and with policy makers about the law, which states that there is a formal and necessary process that any potential immigrant to the United States must follow before immigrating to America. The reality is that there are now millions of residents in the United States who quite literally ignored that law, and came here anyways. Congress is in the midst of a debate about how to make sure that these immigration laws can be more effectively enforced at the points of entry to America, and they are debating what to do, in a very practical sense, about what is estimated to be well over ten million… Read More

MAY 1 PROTESTS Sometimes, when I am up early compiling news stories, I really shake my head. Today is one of those days. On May 1st, there will be a huge day of rallies to, in essence, support illegal immigration into the United States. You can say anything else you want about it, but the bottom line is that advocates of this day of protest are actually protesting the rule of law. They are protesting the idea that there is actually such a thing as right and wrong. It is fair to engage in a dialogue with the people and with policy makers about the law, which states that there is a formal and necessary process that any potential immigrant to the United States must follow before immigrating to America. The reality is that there are now millions of residents in the United States who quite literally ignored that law, and came here anyways. Congress is in the midst of a debate about how to make sure that these immigration laws can be more effectively enforced at the points of entry to America, and they are debating what to do, in a very practical sense, about what is estimated to be well over ten million… Read More