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

The woes of public pensions seems a universal problem. Governments around the globe grapple with these unsustainable money pits in the hopes of avoiding more trouble down the road.

San Diego’s not unique.

But just a year out from the 2012 June primary, we’re seeing lots of hubbub about the pension reform ballot measure out trying to beat the clock on submitting enough valid signatures to get it before San Diego voters for consideration.

Tied into this issue: the mayor’s race. Councilman Carl DeMaio’s planted himself firm in the center of this issue along with his drum-beating partners, Mayor Jerry Sanders and Councilman Kevin Faulconer, who support his opponent, fellow Republican District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis.

In an even stranger turn, she does not support the pension reform.

Ah, don’t you just love politics?

On the outs of the issue, until just mere hours ago, the third Republican mayor candidate… Read More

More Facts, Ma’am: Sergeant Joe Friday probably never said that, but you know what I’m getting at. With the debt limit debate getting close to the final days, you may wonder what happens if we actually go “over the cliff” and do not extend the debt limit by the supposedly magic August 2nd date? The following information is gleaned from a presentation made to the Republican caucus by a former Bush Administration deputy secretary at the Treasury Department who now works with a think tank called the “Bipartisan Policy Center” in DC:

There is general agreement that the federal government will have exhausted all alternative funding sources and will run out of cash on or about August 2nd. This date is largely driven by $23 billion worth of Social Security checks that are scheduled to go out on that day. At that point, the US government is on a cash basis with no ability to borrow more money. That means that it can only spend the same amount of money that comes in. And, this is not an annual issue, it is a daily issue. If $20 billion comes in on Thursday, then you can send $20 billion out. If only $10 billion comes in on Friday,… Read More

Having just finished the “Lion of LIberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation” by Harlow Giles Unger I have been taken back to the great national debate over the powers of government. The discussions of the 1790s are very contemporary. After winning the revolutionary war the country was taken into the constant debate of how to empower and how to limit a national government. Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia joined others in arguing against the ratification of the proposed constitution considering it granted far too many powers to a Federal government over the people and the states. In language prescient to today’s debate he warned of an out of control national government.

Sharing some of those concerns was James Madison and he promised the anti-constitutionalists that if the Constitution was ratified he would propose a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties and to limit the national government. Elected to Congress from Virginia is 1790 he made good on that promise. But not all of his proposals were adopted. This made me curious as to what was left out.

The Madison package that was adopted actually consisted of 12 amendments. The… Read More

Just the Facts, Ma’am: This was the famous retort offered by fictional LA police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, on the TV show Dragnet whenever a female witness started to delve into conjecture or opinion. In these missives, I usually give you heavy doses of my commentary and opinion.

Not today, or tomorrow. As the debt limit debate reaches the critical stage, I felt maybe you needed some facts, just plain facts, about the country’s financial status. Last week in a Budget Committee hearing, the actuaries for the Social Security and Medicare systems testified as to the status of these two programs and provided actuarial projections for both. Here is a summary of the salient points they made. I will let you draw your own conclusions:

Social Security and Medicare currently amount to 35% of all federal spending. Both systems are currently in negative cash flow and are on track for insolvency or exhaustion of their trust funds. The reasons for these impending problems are largely demographic. The United States traditionally had a birth rate of about 3 children per woman up until 1965. By 1975, that rate had dropped to 2 children per… Read More