Imagine a credit card, glossed and shiny, embossed with 16 digits and your name across the front; one linked to the benefit of a credit limit and a payment schedule for amounts owed. While this is a simplified illustration, for all intents and purposes, America has maxed out its own credit card and hit its legal credit limit. In the case of America’s credit limit, that amount is a staggering $14.3 trillion.

One might ask how we managed to max out the country’s credit card. We reached the limit because our government has been on a wild spending spree, recklessly handing out money for new government programs, unwilling to make the tough choices necessary to address out of control spending. Now, we have reached the debt limit and in order to avoid damaging the full faith and credit of the United States, the Congress must ensure any action taken to raise the debt limit comes with real and significant spending reform. According to a recent Gallup Poll and a recent CBS News poll, the majority of Americans do not support raising the debt limit, and this isn’t because they want us to default, but it is because they want Washington to stop the spending.

And… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: One would be hard pressed to find two constitutional and election law attorneys who are more well versed and well respected on the Republican side of the aisle than the co-authors of this important guest column. I commend you to take the time to full read this column, which is a bit longer than we normally feature in this space. But it is important — Flash] The Constitutional Role of Partisans in the Redistricting Process By Professor John C. Eastman and Charles H. Bell, Jr.

Summary: The Citizens Redistricting Commission process has gone seriously awry, hijacked by covert Democrat and leftist partisans who have violated open meeting, public records and conflict of interest laws, playing a “shell game” with draft district maps that likely will cement Democrat 2/3ds control of the State Legislature when finalized. Proposition 11 provided a remedy – Republican commissioners can defeat the final district maps if three Republican commissioners simply vote no. Then, redistricting… Read More

According to today’s Santa Barbara News-Press, Republican State Senator Sam Blakeslee lead a press conference on the Central Coast yesterday where he said from the podium he believes that a lawsuit filed by the liberal League of California Cities and the more liberal California Redevelopment Association to set aside the recent reform of California’s scam-ridden redevelopment agencies is “a valiant and heroic effort”. Blakeslee added at the press conference, “a team of us state senators worked really hard to save redevelopment agencies” but “each and every one of those overtures…were rejected and rejected categorically”.… Read More

The Family Action PAC is one of California’s most prominent conservative donor organizations. Founded years ago in Orange County as a ideologically conservative counter-point to the New Majority, the FAP has long worked hard to elect conservatives to office at the state and local levels.

FR readers know that during this latest state budget debate, there was a lot of controversy within GOP ranks over whether to support legislation that would abolish RDA’s — this legislation was tied to other legislation that would allow RDA’s to continue to exist if they paid money from their plush bank accounts into the state’s needy coffers.

It was clear to me and many other conservatives that any solid legislation that would impair, hamper, or abolish RDAs — is a welcome idea. As I have said, Redevelopment Agencies may have started with a good idea in mind, but they have become a good old boys network of redistributing money through taxes into local development projects, typically being awarded to friends and political contributors of local city council members (who conveniently are the members of the city redevelopment… Read More

So I had a chance once again to play around with iMovie on my Macbook Pro — and recorded a video commentary. I open by saying it’s about a minute long — not so true. It runs around four (very insightful) minutes in length… … Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to present this guest column from FR friend Scott Hounsell… Flash]

THE FACT IS, COUNCILMAN KREKORIAN, YOU ARE TO BLAME… By Scott Hounsell

Governor Mitt Romney made a stop in Los Angeles today, speaking from an empty, abandoned shopping center in North Hollywood, about the failures of the current administration and its effect on the economy nationwide. With poise and ease he was able to field the questions from the media, which were fastball questions aimed at putting the Governor on the spot. With direct answers and poignant incite, he responded leaving the media with little need to follow up to questions.

Immediately after the Governor had concluded, Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Krekorian stepped in front of the cameras to rebut the Governor’s remarks and to take offense to Romney’s used of his district as a backdrop to failure. As with most other Democrats , the Councilman’s finger immediately pointed at previous administrations and their responsibility for our current… Read More

During the recent state budget debate California Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye weighed in loudly about the dire, negative impacts of proposed funding cuts to California’s court system. While the words “tax increase” did not pass her lips, there was no doubt that the timing of her loud, vocal criticism of the budget was intended to put more pressure on the legislature to “increase revenues” rather than impose more cuts. But in the case of Cantil-Sakauye and the courts, it turns out that her loud complaints may have been more about protecting her bureaucratic fiefdom than anything else…

California’s court system handles 9 million cases a year. You would think the most important stakeholders of the court system would be families, businesses, victims of crime and law enforcement all depending on the fast, fair and effective work of the courts in order to settle disputes, keep businesses moving, see justice served and protect the public.

However, due to the poor fiscal and managerial decisions made by Judicial Branch leaders, domestic violence victims, children in dependency courts and those seeking the court’s… Read More

The remaining leadership of the badly fractured California Republican Assembly will meet in Fresno this Friday to conduct their own version of the Salem Witch Trials, only the objects of their kangaroo court will be a list of fellow Republicans, not Democrats, and this particular list includes some of the most accomplished and well-known, well-educated Republican volunteer organizers in the state. Their crime? They lost the CRA election. They tried to elect their own slate of officers to CRA statewide office, and when incumbent Celeste Greig and her Merry Band, desparately and pathetically clinging to office, stacked the rules against them, these Republicans sued in Superior Court AND WON THEIR CASE!

But winning justice into a CRA election did not end the story. While the Greig opponents won in court, they were still outmaneuvered at the convention in Sacramento a few months ago by Greig and her top allies: state Board of Equalization career employee Tom Hudson; and Alan and George Park, all of Placer County; and Orange County trial lawyer Craig Alexander, who all disqualified on technicalities scores of delegates lined up to vote against them.

Hudson and… Read More