Californians whowant fiscally responsible governments and freedom of choicefor government contractors and their employees have another reason for dismay.

Construction union lobbyists are once again advancing their costlyagenda for local governmentsbeyond the corrupt and mismanaged urban centers of Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

In their latest move, union officials and their elected sycophantsare nowpushing formonopoly control of almost $1 billion in planned construction at Coast Community College District in Orange County (California).

This is not the firstinfiltration of government-mandatedProject Labor Agreementsinto Orange County. About a dozen years ago, union lobbyists managed to get control of the taxpayer-funded construction programs of three local governments: Orange County, Santa Ana Unified School District, and Rancho Santiago Community College District. In the case of Orange County, three Republican supervisors voted for it andaRepublican state legislatordefended it.

But California’s supporters of economic and personal freedom shouldnot be discouraged! This… Read More

The USC/LA Times poll released last Sunday, just two days before the Los Angeles city election on Tuesday, pretty much nailed the result of the Mayor’s election, but it surely missed the mark on voter support for the Proposition A sales tax hike on the same ballot.

In the Mayor’s race, the poll reported on voter attitudes which on election day reflected the exact same finishing order of the four top candidates for Mayor. The poll pegged Garcetti as favored by 27% of likely voters, Gruel 25%, Kevin James at 15%, and Jan Perry at 14%. In looking at the actual results of the election, the designers of the USC/LA Times poll have ample reason to congratulate themselves on their work: as stated the candidates all followed in the election in the same order as the poll a few days before; with respective percentage results of 33%, 29%, 16.36% and 15.93%, very closely tracking the poll. Wow. Got to respect that polling.

But just in the Mayor’s race.

Los Angeles voters completely defied the science of the same otherwise very accurate poll of L.A. voter sentiment, when they went to their voting booths last Tuesday, and defeated the Proposition… Read More

How often in life has something not gone quite the way you hoped and you or someone responded with the common phrase, “We’ll make the best of it”? This is reflective of the natural optimism that is an endemic part of American culture.

The “Sequester” went into effect just over a week ago. It is inartful. No one loves it. But, it is better than not reducing the deficit at all and borrowing another $85 billion per year. Even though it was his idea, we now know that the president hates it. But, rather than take something he isn’t happy with and “make the best of it”, the president has decided to “make the worst of it”. He has affirmatively decided to intentionally and unnecessarily inflict discomfort on as many Americans as possible in a distasteful attempt to justify his excessive rhetoric of the last few weeks.

Amongst the many egregious actions taken is his unilaterally canceling of all White House tours, effective Saturday, under the guise of forced cost reductions because of the Sequester. The problem with that logic is that White House tours don’t cost anything. There are no tour guides except for a few… Read More

Ken Grubbs, Jr,. and I authored this Weekly Standard cover story about whether California is too big to fail. Tell me what you think.

One early December morning, Las Vegas police moved in on the Silverton Hotel and Casino, just off the Strip and known for its 117,000-gallon aquarium. There, having located a getaway black Audi with no license plates, they arrested 31-year-old Ka Pasasouk​—​a Laotian immigrant with a violent history who had eluded deportation as well as imprisonment. The Dragnet-style work came less than 24 hours after police back in Northridge, a Los Angeles suburb known for a state university campus, discovered what they called a “very grisly tableau.”

Outside an overcrowded boarding house, described in press accounts as unlicensed, lay the bodies of two men and two women, whom Pasasouk has now been charged with murdering. The story captured attention up and down the already tense state, where the phrase “grisly tableau” could easily have found wide use in the ubiquitous conversations about California’s… Read More

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association released a new poll today that shows the majority of California voters oppose lowering the voting requirement for local per parcel property taxes from two-thirds to 55%. More than 53% of voters oppose the change, and only 35% support the change. Approximately 11% were undecided.

Moreover, a majority of those against don’t just oppose the change – they oppose it strongly. The intensity of opposition to lowering the voting threshold was nearly double what it was for those in support. 40% of voters “definitely” oppose the idea of lowering the vote requirement, while just 21% say they would definitely support the change.

Furthermore, opposition to changing the voting threshold was broad-based: 68% of Republicans oppose it, along with nearly 53% of Decline-to-State (DTS) voters, while a plurality (44%) of Democrats also oppose it. In addition, more Democrat women – 50% – also oppose the change.

This poll mirrors what we’ve been hearing from our members who are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. They oppose any further money grab from politicians – whether from Sacramento or the local level… Read More

Having had a day to begin the recovery process from yet another California Republican Party convention, I thought I would take the opportunity to share some thoughts about the weekend. Starting with some “big picture” observations first, and in no particular order…

The biennial organizational convention of the committee is typically a well-attended affair, and this one proved up to the expectation. With well over a thousand delegates on hand (not to mention all of the guests as well) there is no doubt the event was a money-maker for the cash strapped California GOP. While attendance tapered off at some of the other meal functions where the speakers were lower profile — the attendance at the Saturday luncheon was stunning in its size, for a CRP convention. There were many press accounts of Rove’s speech, and you can check out my exclusive convention sit-down video interview with Rove here. I would largely characterize the mood of the delegates as “resolved” — it wasn’t as celebratory a crowd is in some conventions past, but then the CRP is at a challenging time… Read More

The Sequester: I would wager that just a few months ago very few of you knew what the word “sequester” meant. Maybe you didn’t know how to pronounce it either (see-kwes-ter). I can tell you that I had never heard the word before I was elected to Congress. And, it took me a couple of terms on the budget committee to become familiar with it.

But, now we all know. It is a budgeting mechanism by which across-the-board spending reductions are enforced. And, it went into effect on March 1st.

Listening to the president, you would think that the Mayan calendar was off by a couple of months and that the end of the world was really coming as a result of the Sequester. From the dramatic rhetoric in his perpetual campaign swing, it sounds like life as we know it will cease because of a 2% reduction in the growth of planned government spending. What you are not hearing is that even with the Sequester cuts in effect, total federal spending this year will be higher than last year. So, why all the drama? Because it is clear that the president wants to increase spending and increase taxes and he wants you to think that the… Read More

February 26, 2013 officially marked the secondanniversary of the California Young Republican Federation!

The Young Republicanshave actually existed in some form in Californiaat least since the 1950s. However, as most readers know, there was a major YRelection dispute 20 years ago, causing the organization to split into the California Young Republicans (CYR) and the Young Republican Federation of California (YRFC). Approximately four years ago, I assumed the position of CYR Secretary, under then CYR-Chair Jenniffer Rodriguez. Jenniffer and I decided that there was no need to continue the split when the original people behind it were by and large no longer of YR age, so we approached YRFC’s leadership at the time, headed up by then-Chairman Shawn Fago and then-National Committeeman Adam Abrahms, to begin merger negotiations.

Unfortunately, some leaders of CYR, primarily in Kern County,did not wish to merge with YRFC, because growing the size of the organization’s membership and Board of Directors meant they would lose some amount of power. So, these Kern County YRs resorted to various tactics to try and block the merger, ultimately… Read More