John F. Kennedy established the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1963. Unfortunately, he did not live to honor the medal’s first recipients. Kennedy was included posthumously in the first class. Over the past 60 years, this recognition has been bestowed on many worthy people. Recent events have led me to focus on someone who measures up for this distinct honor in all respects. Dennis Prager – a beloved friend — suffered a very serious injury as many of you know. Dennis has shown to be the very definition of a person worthy of a President bestowing this medal since his accident. He has arduously moved from a near-death experience back to renewing the many personal attributes that has earned him consideration for this high honor. The team of family and close friends who have pulled together to help his extraordinary wife Sue with nurturing Dennis back to using his unique talents to improve the lives of others is a relatively small validation of his effect on the world. Many of us are daily engaged in providing “DP updates” to nearly everyone we collectively know. This clearly demonstrates the far reaches of those touched by Dennis.… Read More

Democrats are mystified by the “changes of heart” by Governor Gavin Newsom on certain issues advocated by Republicans, and these Democrats are thinking Newsom is selling them out. He has attacked Republicans at every turn over the last five years, and spent taxpayers’ money on every crazy thing he could think of, let government workers lounge around their house when they’re supposed to be at work, and adopted a lot of other left-wing policies for California, making him the darling of the left-wing Democrats across the country and a leading Democrat contender for President in 2028. Then, all of the sudden, he acknowledged that maybe Republicans are not as bad as he said a little over a year ago, and maybe some of their policies make sense. The left-wingers are losing their mind.

I think I know why he has changed his mind. Those same Republicans he has been attacking for years now have the power to bail him out from the worst consequences of his bad policies over the years. The state is short over $6 billion in its ability to pay for its MediCal health care program, the taxpayer paid free medical program, which provides free medical care… Read More

The State Bar is seeking to disbar Dr. John Eastman. For what, you may ask? Not for theft of millions of dollars from clients. The Bar doesn’t do that if you suck up to the political power structure. Just ask Thomas Girardi, who took millions in client trust funds, which the State Bar ignored for years because Girardi treated the Board of the State Bar to expensive dinners and gifts. So it ignored the dozens of complaints against Girardi for years, allowing him to continue taking his clients’ money.

It isn’t for failure to aggressively and zealously pursue his client’s interests. There are lots of lawyers who fail to do that every day, and they never get investigated, even when a complaint is filed against them. If Dr. Eastman did anything, he aggressively and zealously pursued and protected the interests of the wrong client, that is, President Donald Trump, in a state where doing that is as close to a capital offense as you can get. Democrats across the country believe they were justified in attempting to destroy the life, livelihood, reputation and freedom of hundreds of people whose only sin was supporting Donald Trump, and Dr.… Read More

Last Thursday, State Senator Monique Limon and Assemblymember Gregg Hart hosted a hearing on the new effort by Sable, a Texas-based oil company, to reopen some offshore oil drilling that has been shut down since the Refugio Oil Spill that took place a decade ago. Before I talk about the hearing a bit, I want to make it clear that everyone wants to make sure that California’s beautiful coastline is preserved for current and future generations. But it is also the case that if you want California to simply be pristine and untouched by humankind, clearly the best plan for that would be to eject the people from the Golden State, and make it one big nature preserve. But of course that is not realistic. There is a reality of 40 million of us living here. That many people are enormous consumers of — everything. Which includes, of course, energy. So it is the job of public policy makers to have a balanced public policy, that both safeguards our natural resources but which has an intense focus on allowing the people in California to flourish in their lives. I do not think I need to write too much about this in this space, but tens of millions of people… Read More

When providing analysis to my friends of President Trump’s actions, there is one overriding question. I have criticized positions of Trump despite overwhelmingly supporting his positions and actions. The one clear place with which I currently disagree with and would love to see the Administration change positions is sending checks to taxpayers for cost reductions in the federal government. These reductions would be realized by reducing the federal workforce and reining in expenditures, many of them fraudulent. President Trump has taken many actions for which I am delighted. Banning DEI is among the top. It has a perceived ideological stink, misdirection from our historical standards of equality and promoting merit above physical aspects and wastes time and money on nonsense. I also love banning biological men from women’s sports. God knows how many times I have written about that. My personal favorite move by the President is the banning of paper straws. If there is a common cause of the American people, it is to discard this Leftist boondoggle. The ideas that are generated from DOGE are now penetrating all departments with the approval of the… Read More

I never like suggesting a course of action without also suggesting a strategy and plan to implement that course. Yesterday, I said fight, and choose a Republican leader who will fight. But “fighting” without a strategy and a plan is simply flailing. Flailing is not fighting, and you can’t fight something with nothing.

I believe we are on the cusp of major changes in California, but those changes will not occur on their own. Republicans will need to be prepared and need to be ready to work to achieve those changes. It won’t happen in one election cycle, it will occur over several, but Republicans need to have a plan to exploit the unease most voters feel about the continuing Democrat majorities. These changes have occurred in other states over time, and came from the same reasons. Voters felt the unease and the Republicans in those states were ready with an agenda and a plan to implement that agenda. Voters were unhappy with Democrats in those states, and Republicans exploited the unhappiness over several elections cycles and ultimately took over those Legislatures.

The first step in taking over any legislative body is to… Read More

I read recently that there was an internal discussion in the Assembly Republican Caucus about the direction it should take as the Assembly Republican Leader, James Gallagher, leaves the Legislature next year due to term limits. This is not a new disagreement. Republicans have, for as long as I can remember, always had s discussion about the best way to handle their minority status. Do we fight or do we figure out how to “get things done.” For those who care, I have only one piece of advice that comes from my Legislative experience. My advice?

FIGHT

Always fight, never stop fighting, always look for the Ds political weakness, and exploit them as best you can, fighting with all the energy and resources you can muster.

When I was first elected, I had the opportunity to attend a meeting convened by former State Senator H.L. Richardson. Through the 1960’s, 70’s, 80’s and 90’s, he was the voice of conservatives in California. At the meeting, he took each of us who attended aside for a private meeting. In that meeting, he asked me “What do you think you’re role is in the Legislature?” I said… Read More

Let’s refresh what we learned in our Budgetese as a Second Language (BSL) lesson yesterday:

Base – what the government agency spent last year

Budget Change Proposal (BCP) – what the government agency wants to spend this year.

Baseline Budget – the base plus the BCP number

Budget Cuts – Cuts to the Baseline Budget, usually a reduction in the amount requested in the BCP

Line item – each individual BCP request per program

Legislative Action – the vote by the decision makers on the BCP requests.

Now, with that refresher, we are ready to talk about zero base budgeting. Simply stated, a zero base budget process requires the bureaucracy to assume a zero base when it prepares its BCP. What that means is that expenditures for personnel, equipment, logistics, real estate leasing or purchase costs, plus transfers made to accomplish the mission of the bureaucracy are listed in the BCP, and the decision maker, that is, legislator or member of Congress can see everything on which the bureaucracy is spending to accomplish its purpose, not just want they want is the coming… Read More