Will Rogers delivered what is my favorite wry comment about government: “Thank God we don’t get all the government we pay for.” Certainly such is the case deep within our 13 story San Diego city hall.

The SAN DIEGO U-T reports that the city needs an average of 280 days to fill a vacancy. That’s just over nine months to hire someone to do a job.

With the exception of police and a few niche high skill slots, this makes no sense at all. No private sector company would take two months to fill most slots. Often not two WEEKS. Yet San Diego needs over nine months. Awesome!

It’s not as though they can’t find qualified applicants. Even with San Diego’s reformed 401k-type pensions — such government positions would draw crowds of eager applicants if anyone at the city bothered to post a CraigsList want ad for $25. So it’s not that the city can’t find good applicants — it’s just the “city way” of doing business.

Here’s the irony. We’re told by government labor union bosses that we need to pay top dollar to entice “the best and the… Read More

by Richard Rider, Chairman, San Diego Tax Fighters

Updated1 September, 2013

Phone: 858-530-3027 Blog:www.RiderRants.BlogSpot.com

When it comes to gathering sufficient property taxes, Prop 13 is no problem at all–except for profligate spenders. Look at the history of my San Diego County–a history which pretty much reflects the history of… Read More

Back in 2011 a California state legislator told me, off the record, that for years, a secret 7:00 a.m. meeting is held once per week in Sacramento. At this meeting are a handful of top officials representing the major public sector unions active in California. They discuss current legislation, political trends, opposition groups, emerging issues, and coordinate their strategy. Collectively, just within California, these public sector union leaders collect and spend over $1.0 billion in membership dues and fees every year.

Compare this to the supposedly shocking expose published this week by the esteemed U.K. Guardian, entitled “State conservative groups plan US-wide assault on education, health and tax.”

If you haven’t heard of the U.K. Guardian before 2013, you might remember it as the media venue that recently published fugitive Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. With a combined worldwide monthly print and online audience of over 30 million, the Guardian is no lightweight. But they seem to have a bad case of scope insensitivity when it comes to… Read More

The fallout from Obamacare continues to take a toll on the President’s party and its candidates according to the latest round of polling released before the Christmas holidays. The collapse of Democrat support represents a total reversal from the days during and after the October federal government shutdown when Republican support slid dramatically and sentiment about Democrats surged across the board.

A top level number of concern to national strategists is the “generic ballot test,” which gauges general voter sentiment by asking whether someone would support a Republican or Democrat candidate for Congress. It’s a good barometer because it factors out individual candidate or district characteristics, and thus is a gauge of general sentiment toward each party.

Today, Republicans lead in the generic ballot test, 41% to 38% in the latest Quinnipiac survey. It is the first time Republicans have led in this critical indicator all year.

Digging deeper, we see Democrats and Republicans are roughly equally loyal to their… Read More

In March of 2001 I started producing an e-mail newsletter, The FlashReport, that went out several times a week, which combined daily clippings with my own analysis and commentary on California politics. In October of 2005 I flipped the newsletter into this website, where, along with my Editors John Hrabe and Anton Hartmann (and Nick Romero back in the day), have still been producing daily links to online political stories as well as a lot of great original content not only from yours truly but from hundreds of contributors. The last month I did something I had not done for over a dozen years — I took a month off. I had a family vacation planned before Thanksgiving, and decided that I would truly “unplug” and spend quality time with my wife and kids. It was a much needed break — and it was nice to simply consume political stories rather than create them!

… Read More

Here is a terrific, civil, three minute rebuttal of Obama’s health care policies in general and his attacks on Fox News in particular. Kudos to Nick Cavuto for presenting such a devastating yet well-reasoned and dispassionate smack down of ourTeflonPresident.

If the video doesn’t work, just click on this link to watch the official Fox segment on YouTube. Did I mention it’s only 3 minutes?

… Read More

Because Ronald Reagan left office almost 25 years ago we shouldn’t be surprised that most young adults do not remember him. But the real question is whether his views about America and its place in history retain any relevance at all to today’s Millennial generation.

When Reagan, after his presidency, spoke to a meeting of members of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in 1992, he stressed the importance of passing on our hard earned freedoms to future generations and the willingness to fight to preserve them. He contrasted our constitution with those of other nations, saying almost all the world’s constitutions are documents that tell the people what their privileges are, while with ours, “we the people” tell government what it is allowed to do. Speaking of the importance of limiting overreaching government, he said, “This belief has been the underlying basis for everything I have tried to do.”

Since the election of Barrack Obama, with his costly big government agenda, commentators have opined that the values associated with free markets, limited government and individual responsibility do not resonate with the millennial generation. This… Read More

This series reports on the backgrounds of the board members and officials ofthe ALRB. Part 1 ishere.

The Agricultural Labor Relations Board is made up of five members, the board was created when the Agricultural Labor Relations Act was signed into law in June 1975 by Gov. Jerry Brown.

With two vacancies, the board currently hasthree members:

* Chairwoman Genevieve A. Shiroma, who has served on the board since 1999, was… Read More