When he took the oath of office at midnight on January 3, 1967, Governor Ronald Reagan assumed a $200 million budget deficit left by his predecessor, Democrat Pat Brown, whom he beat in the election by over one million votes. $200 million was a lot of money 49 years ago. He was elected on a promise to reform California’s notorious “welfare state” and “clean up the mess at Berkeley” where student protesters were literally shutting down the campus. He had to freeze government hiring to stop runaway spending. He even had to do the unthinkable for a conservative Republican – approve some tax hikes to balance the budget, as required by law. But he transformed state government from weakness to strength, from fat to lean, and left office having achieving a budget surplus. His time as Governor helped him shape policies that would carry him into the Presidency by 1981, where he cut taxes and reduced the growth of Federal spending, ushering in the biggest peacetime expansion of the economy in history, creating countless new jobs; and he invested in America’s military and set the stage for the fall of the Berlin Wall and victory in the… Read More

The Chargers announced yesterday the team officially filed for relocation to Carson. The Dean Spanos video announcement is here.

No surprise, Twitter lit up as a result.

Leading the reaction was a series of tweets from SDUT Opinion Editor Matthew Hall, which Sports Illustrated Senior Writer Lee Jenkins touted as “the best use of Twitter” he’d ever seen.

Hall tweeted:

Dean Spanos: “We’ve had nine different proposals that we’ve made, all of them were basically rejected by the city.” OK, let’s list the nine.

1. A 2003 proposal to redevelop the Qualcomm site had drawings and a conceptual $400M financing outline: Chargers to pay half for free land.

2. An offer from National City for the team to develop 52 acres controlled by the Port and railroad that collapsed with no formal team… Read More

California State Senator Richard Pan, a Democrat representing the Sacramento suburbs, was the author of Senate Bill 277, one of the most controversial California bills of 2015.

SB 277 is supposed to result in eventual “total immunization of appropriate age groups” against ten childhood diseases and possibly other diseases to be added to the list later. Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 277 in June 2015 after it passed the Assembly 46-31-3 and the Senate 24-14-2. It is now in effect as California law.

The law eliminates a statutory exemption from immunization requirements based upon personal beliefs. Private or public elementary or secondary schools, child care centers, day nurseries, nursery schools, family day care homes, or development centers are no longer allowed to admit a pupil unconditionally unless that that pupil has been immunized for listed diseases.

Vaccines have helped modern civilizations to flourish by controlling infectious diseases. And Senator Pan repeatedly referred to “science” as justification for his bill. Nevertheless, some Californians objected vehemently to a new government mandate to inject substances… Read More

Sacramento grocery shoppers are livid. Even the liberals.

While shopping Jan. 3 at two Sacramento stores, I witnessed mounting shopper anger as they were told they’d be charged .10 cents per grocery bag. One woman screamed back at the checker, “This is ridiculous!” as she tossed all of her items back into the cart on her way out of the store. She then angrily threw the same loose, un-bagged items into her trunk and drove off… with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker.

At another large retailer, most shoppers were also caught off guard, and angrily acquiesced to the bag charges. And they weren’t silent about their anger. “Ten cents for this piece of &*#t?” one woman asked another shopper, holding up a new bag. (No, I wasn’t at WalMart)

Wait until these shoppers discover that California’s coddled welfare recipients won’t be charged for… Read More

The attacks on Proposition 13 began within a few days after its overwhelming passage by California voters on June 6, 1978. Over the last three and half decades, this landmark taxpayer protection has been assailed in the legislature, the courts and by ballot initiatives sponsored by tax-and-spend interests. These assaults continue to this day.

In a development that has surprised taxpayer advocates and the business community, a new attack on Proposition 13 is quickly gaining traction. Filed as an initiative with the sympathetic title of “Lifting Children and Families Out of Poverty Act,” the proposal would impose a massive $6 billion property tax increase on both homeowners and business properties. Its primary backer is Conway Collis, a former member of the California Board of Equalization.

The fact that there is yet another attack on Proposition 13 is not much of a surprise. However, this proposal is as odd as it is dangerous. First, it is not being financed by the usual anti-Proposition 13 coalition of public sector unions and local government interests. Instead, the funding is coming from anti-poverty groups aligned with the Catholic Church, including the… Read More

From the State of California’s Department of Business Prevention comes another random minimum wage hike to help kill off more businesses.

The final phase of the 2013 Assembly Bill 10 went into effect Jan. 1, bumping the minimum wage to $10-per-hour statewide. AB 10 is the final step of a two-stage increase. California and Massachusetts are now the states with the highest minimum wage. Only California is also home to the highest income taxes, sales taxes, and high property taxes.

Bureaucrats Interfere

Work should be valued only… Read More

California will be sending 172 delegates of the total of 2,470 delegates that will be credentialed at the next Republican National Convention July 18-21 in Cleveland, Ohio. Since the days of Ronald Reagan, California has become a reliably “blue” state in Presidential elections, which has caused its percentage share of delegates to the GOP national convention to shrink, in comparison to reliably “red” states like Texas. This is because the Republican party rewards states that reliably vote Republican with a few extra delegates. When I attended the 1976 Republican National Convention in Kansas City as a delegate for Ronald Reagan, California had more influence on the process, but still not quite enough alone to propel Reagan to the nomination in THAT election. Nevertheless, today California’s shear size, plus its status as an essentially “winner-take-all” primary state, mean that even as a “blue” state in the Fall, its’ total delegate count is still equal to about 14% of the delegates needed to win the nomination in Cleveland. (The “magic number” is 1,236.) That is a large slug of delegates,… Read More

An horrifically inaccurate opinion article claiming fracking is making people sick in Kern County ran Saturday in the Sacramento Bee, without any fact checking, and without a counterpoint article.

In “Oil runs amok in Kern County,” author Rosanna Esparza, a community organizer in Kern County and Sierra Club member, takes issue with the Kern County Board of Supervisors’ November vote to approve a zoning change to streamline Kern oil and gas permitting. “California continues to be a leader on climate with actions such as the passage of SB 350 by the Legislature, which seeks to increase our renewable energy mix to 50 percent and double the energy efficiency of existing buildings,” Esparza wrote.

I am pro-environment and a… Read More