Do you know anyone who still is on a T-Mobile phone? I know a few. That said, I was shocked when I looked it up — over 33 MILLION Americans are on T-Mobile!

My interest was peaked because of the big news that AT&T is acquiring T-Mobile. This will make AT&T the largest provider of wireless service in the U.S. by far — at around 130 million customers. Behind them will be Verizon with 96 million customers. From there, you have TracFone (17 million), MetroPCS (8 million), U.S. Cellular (6 million) and so on.

The first thought that I had? That it is nice to see a big American company like AT&T expanding, by gobbling up a European one. I am not protectionist, and am an advocate for fair and free trade. But we’re in a nationwide period of economic malaise — so seeing someone on the "home… Read More

Conservative State Senator Joel Anderson recently introduced his proposal to eliminate CalTrans. Early today Senator Anderson introduced this idea to the weekly Heritage Foundation Boggers Briefing in Washington, D.C. Anderson appears by video-conference. So below is your chance to see Anderson talking about the bill (its the first agenda item for the group)…

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After 18 years as a CRP delegate and Executive Committee member, two terms as CRP Vice Chairman Central, a term as CRP Treasurer and the past 4 years on the CRP Rules Committee, I’ll have to admit, many CRP convention agendasdon’t inspire me to attend. In fact, if there is nothing interesting going on, in many cases I no longer attend conventions.But because the Party was considering, through the Rules Committee, a way to endorse candidates and select nominees in a post Prop 14 era, I thought I would make the trek to Sacramento to weigh in and be a part of the process this past weekend. My mission: make sure any plan passing the Rules Committee included no special protection for incumbent legislators.

I left Fresno Friday morning asa strong supporter of the Nehring plan. Here is the language I liked: (K) DISTRICTS WITH A REPUBLICAN INCUMBENT… Read More

On a party line vote the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee this afternoon passed out Assembly Bill 153 by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley).

Although not surprised, I’m disappointed by the Committee’s decision to move forward with a tax measure that will cost California jobs and hurt state revenues. There are as many as 25,000 internet affiliate businesses based in our state that could be wiped out by this bill.

Leading online retailers, including Amazon and Overstock, have informed me that passage of this bill will force them to terminate their relationships with their California-based affiliates.

Out-of-state retailers, with no physical presence in the California, have no legal obligation to collect California’s sales or use taxes. AB 153 is trying to redefine ‘physical presence’ to include the use of online affiliate advertisers based in California.

The bill simply won’t work. Out-of-state retailers will cut ties with their California affiliates and continue selling to California consumers. The only thing AB 153 does is kill up to 25,000 affiliate jobs in California. That’s the last… Read More

Sometimes otherwise lazy MSM reporters will pull the mandatory, periodic Form 700 conflict of interest disclosures of state legislators right after they are filed, as part of their journalistic routines, and do a story comparing relative finances or gifts received of our Assembly and State Senate representatives. I didn’t see much news coverage of these filings after the most recent round of disclosures, so I figured there probably just wasn’t much to report. But I decided to take a look at all the filings anyway, just for legislators in my home county of Orange, and compare them, and here is what I found according to the reports. Please keep in mind the reports are general and use wide ranges, so they are not entirely accurate, and they don’t have to be, as the idea is not be exactly precise, but to disclose potential conflicts. Here we go: of The O.C.’s four state senators, MIMI WALTERS looks like the financial leader in stocks and business ownership, but Lou Correa appears to own a lot of real estate. Walters discloses ownership of between $660,000 to $6.6 million in stocks, appears to own all or a good piece of an apartment building in… Read More

I am not really a huge fan of some of the decisions of the top leadership of the California Republican Party in the last couple years, I am more a lukewarm fan, and I am quite wary of it’s future. I have made my views known appropriately, discreetly, and also publicly. Past decisions I didn’t like include hiring illegal aliens to manage the finances of the party, generalized support for recalls of Republican incumbent legislators who were at least 80% for us; sideline support, if any, of our own candidate for Lt. Governor, whom vote analysis demonstrated was a 80% plus GOP legislator; and the lack of a meaningful plan to urgently build support for the GOP with Latino voters. I also think we enter the next election cycle without top leadership that can inspire the support we need from the business community to be relevant. All that said, I strongly support the Nehring Plan to give GOP central committee members some clout in the party candidate nominating process, and diminish a little the influence of incumbent officeholders. Proposition 14, which I opposed, has taken away the right of Republican grass roots primary voters to name their party’s nominee in… Read More

“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” – Author Unknown

Risk and Uncertainty: A lot of new uncertainties have been added in the last few weeks. Will the Japanese reactor meltdown, and what effect will that have on nuclear energy supplies? Will the Japanese economy slump further, and how will that impact U.S. growth and jobs? Who is going to control Libya, or Egypt, or Bahrain or Saudi Arabia in the future? Will the answer to that question affect the world’s oil supplies or prices? And, how will that affect our economic growth? Will the governments of those countries be friendly to the West or will Islamic fundamentalists rule and sponsor more attacks and terrorism?

It can be scary to turn on the news these days. These threats and risks are real. And, they are largely out of our control.

But, there are other risks out there. Will our debt swamp the country and send us into a government-led collapse? In order to avoid collapse, will the Fed print more… Read More

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