[Publisher’s Note: Last week all of us involved with politics lost a member of our “family” with the passing of Steven Kinney. A friend, an advisor, and one of the country’s most accomplished political pollsters, Steve passed away last week after a battle with cancer. I will miss him greatly. I reached out to a mutual friend of Steve’s and mine – Dora Kingsley Vertenten – to ask if she would pen a eulogy of Steve. Steve is survived by his wife, Cynthia. Information on a memorial service to be held in early June can be found here. If you have some thoughts or memories of Steve, feel free to comment below if you are a registered Facebook user. – Jon Fleischman]

Steve Kinney was a good man, honest pollster and wonderful friend. He understood two key concepts increasingly rare in partisan politics today: protocol and respect for position. More important than his great interest and expertise in… Read More

Despite the fact that California these days is politically dominated by the axis of big government – public employee unions and radical left-wingers, there are still a lot of conservatives here in the Golden State. And we care about the future of our communities, our state, and our country. Conservatives are engaged in many ways, especially using social networking tools. One of those tools is Twitter. Over the last couple of months I have been working to compile a list of the Top 50 California Conservatives on Twitter. Between people I have been following and the overwhelming amount of input from our… Read More

On May 17th the Los Angeles Police Protective Leagues “Board of Directors” authored a post on their LAPPL blog entitled “Inventing the headline number,”attacking the research and the motives of California Public Policy Center. Here’s how the post began:

“The playbook is familiar now—gin up a study on public pensions and government debt to be released to media outlets with a headline-grabbing number shrieking doom for public finances. The latest exhibit is a propaganda piece tossed out to the media by the anti-public employees group California Public Policy Center (CPPC) purposely inflates pension debt.”

Despite claiming the CPPC study was mere propaganda, the LAPPL failed to convincingly refute any of its findings, including the estimate that California’s state and local government debt totals between $648 billion and $1.1 trillion, depending primarily on what assumptions one uses to discount future pension obligations. The “discount rate” used to estimate a present value for future retirement payments – already earned… Read More

Voters cast ballots for people, not for lists of policy positions. While a candidate’s positions on individual issues are important, voters look for signs of how the a person would use the power of government after the election, if he or she wins.

A candidate’s personal narrative is as influential, if not more so, than their party affiliation or the nuances of their philosophy. Rudy Giuliani was elected Mayor not because his party or philosophy was closest to his fellow New Yorkers in that heavily Democratic city, but rather because his personal qualifications and narrative proved more compelling than those of his rivals. The same is true of leaders including Governors Chris Christie (NJ) and Susana Martinez (NM).

The person is important.

The kind of leader a candidate proves to be on the campaign trail can provide valuable insight to how he or she will govern. It is the candidate who ultimately sets the tone within a campaign, and sends important signals with their attitude, demeanor, whom they hire, and the kind of direction they are given.

Think of a candidate you’ve met. Now, think of some of the people who were hired by that… Read More

The Caltrans Bay Bridge debacle is worse than just a case of embarrassment for government infrastructure projects. The bridge is unsafe, according to engineering experts across the country, after the discovery that a third of the of the 96 massive, high-strength steel rods, installed for seismic safety, cracked under pressure when the nuts affixed to the rods were tightened.

Under construction for more than a decade, the Bay Bridge project has not only taken much longer to build than planned, but cost overruns have escalated the total cost to build it to a whopping $6.4 billion. And that’s not the half of it.

According to CBS San Francisco, retired Bechtel metallurgist Yun Chung recently prepared an unsolicited 32-page report stating that Caltrans engineers “were ignorant to the threat of hydrogen embrittlement — a process in which high strength metals, such… Read More

Last week we alerted California taxpayers as to the immediate threats to Proposition 13 being heard by a California legislative committee.As fully anticipated, the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance approved all six of the anti-Prop 13 proposals.

All of the bills in question would gut one of the most important provisions of Proposition 13 – the two thirds vote requirement for additional “add on” parcel taxes.These “add on” parcel and bond taxes are ontopof the property tax homeowners already pay under current law.

The six bills are designated as “SCAs” standing for “Senate Constitutional Amendments.”The Legislature itself cannot change the constitution without voter approval so the issue for each of these “SCAs” was whether they should proceed through the legislative process and appear on the ballot as partial repeals of Prop 13 which itself is part of the constitution.

The bills are as follows:

Senate Constitutional Amendment 3 (SCA 3), Mark Leno (D—San Francisco):Lowers the threshold for school district per-parcel property taxes from two-thirds to 55%. This is a direct… Read More

RIDER COMMENT: One core tenet of public education is this: “More spending on education provides better results.” It’s intuitive, axiomatic — and dead wrong.

Here’s the summation of a recent study (one of several) verifying this lack of correlation. Indeed, closer inspection often reveals an INVERSE correlation. A second, more detailed study is included below as well.

Obviously correlation does not prove causation, but a LACK of correlation makes any causation claims highly suspect. Most studies that DO conclude there is some causation are produced by and for the public education employees — and often even funded by such groups (primarily labor unions).

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http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/study-finds-no-relationship-between-ed-spending-and-results/

For the 34 years since the passage of Prop 13, advocates for higher taxes have complained about inadequate CA property tax revenue. But the one thing ALL such critics have in common is that they NEVER show the actual revenue shortfall. They never provide the figures.

They never compare the property tax revenue collected in 1977 (the year before the big Prop 13 drop when everything was supposedly hunky dory) with the property tax revenue being collected today.

Why? For one of two reasons. And ONLY one.

1. They don’t know the figures. Never checked. Even supposed financial gurus haven’t a clue what the numbers are. They just INTUITIVELY know that the revenues are woefully inadequate. After all, this “massive revenue shortfall” has been endlessly cited by fellow leading California “progressives” for decades, so most liberals mindlessly conclude that it MUST be true.

2. They DO know the figures. But they intentionally omit them, as such figures DESTROY their argument. For it turns out – compared to property tax revenue collected the year BEFORE Prop 13 passed – in the more populous counties (over 85% of the CA population live in… Read More