The Senate Republican Caucus has released a report on the Sunset Review Process that is a great overview and reminded me of my experience for 10 months as Secretary for State and Consumer Affairs last year. My conclusion regarding consumer licensing boards and bureaus would be to make the default choice of the review to be elimination of them all. The state’s 38 licensing boards and bureaus give consumers a false confidence that every license holder will provide quality service while the truth is that the best the board can do is certify that the person passed a test or got a degree and that they have no criminal record. This is far from quality service. Worse yet, when a complaint is made against a license holder the accused has all of the same rights as in criminal court which creates a burden on the board staff to administer and unfairly pits the accuser against the professional. The result is often that the accuser’s personal life is on trial. If ever the accusation is found to be justified the licensee gets a restricted license or loses it for a period and… Read More

The Taxman Cometh: Number One Mailer in Country out of San Diego… Kudos tolead consultant John Wainio and supporting consultants Jim Sills and Tish Sjoberg for recently nailing down First Place in the Nation with a coveted Reed Award from Campaigns and Election magazine in the "Direct Mail, Republican Advocacy" category. Their winning mailer was produced to benefit last year’s successful Re-Elect County Supervisor Bill Horn effort. The piece takes on Horn Challenger Steve Gronke forhis record as aVista City Councilman. (See a larger version here.)

Sills writes about the mail piece, "The Taxman," on San Diego Rostra:

"Unnamed, but clearly responsible, is the Late, Great George Harrison who penned this… Read More

Let the purges begin.

Young Americans for Freedom announced they were purging Ron Paul from their Advisory Board. I couldn’t help but wonder what all the great purges that took place in YAF would have looked like had Al gore "invented" the internet back then.

I admit to being a member of CAL-YAF during my college days, but I was involved more in Students for America, which the Los Angeles Times Magazine described as "even more conservative". That said there have been many purges of verysuccessful conservatives.

Perhaps FR Publisher Jon Fleischman and FR writers Jim Lacy, Barry Jantz, "Shawn" Steel and maybe others I missed could share some history with folks.

Off with their heads!… Read More

It’s being reported that Governor Jerry Brown flew down to Los Angeles yesterday to go pitch the businesses in the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce on why they should support his budget plan (and put pressure on GOP legislators to do the same). Jerry Brown just doesn’t get it. Look in the rear view mirror. In 2009, the very same taxes he wants to extend for five years were enacted as part of a budget deal that spawned an ill-fated ballot measure that would have extended the taxes for just two more years. That ballot measure, as everyone knows, was defeated by almost a two-to-one margin in a June 2009 special election.

I wonder if Jerry Brown is aware of the fact that the “business community” in California (most notably the CalChamber) supported both the terrible budget deal and the passage of the extension of the taxes that appeared on the ballot. It was a clear demonstration of a disconnect between California voters and big business (of course in that budget deal, the Chamber backed higher income, sales and… Read More

The MSM has reported that Secretary of State Debra Bowen is considering running to replace Jane Harman in the U.S. House of Representatives, who recently quit her job representing the 36th CD, based in southern and coastal Los Angeles County (see map here).

If Bowen (pictured left) runs, it raises an interesting question, first broached today by our friends at CalBuzz. The Secretary of State’s chief… Read More

FR friend Shane Goldmacher has a starting blog post over at the Los Angeles Times Politi-cal website where he reveals that the California Department of Public Health (which collects money from a tax on cigarette passed by voters back in 1988 to then use for a number of purposes including anti-smoking education) made a decision to run a taxpayer funded anti-smoking ad — during the Superbowl!

The decision to place and fund this ad was apparently made by Colleen Stevens at the state health department. From the Goldmacher piece… For her part, Colleen Stevens, chief of the Tobacco Control Media Campaign at the California Department of Public Health, said she was thrilled by the Super Bowl exposure. The year’s football game drew a record 111 million viewers nationally, according the Nielsen’s estimates. The state’s ad aired at least in Los… Read More

Note to State Senator Mark Leno, and the host of other liberal politicians who really, really hate that California’s Constitution includes voter-approved taxpayer protections. There is a sound policy reason for why it takes a two-thirds vote in order to raise taxes — it is to prevent majority tyranny.… Read More

Conservative Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, a fresher face on the national scene,will be very much in the spotlight at this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, opening today at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel on upper Connecticut, N.W. in Washington, D.C. And a last minute addition appears to be Donald Trump! CPAC promoters are stating that registration hit 10,000 people yesterday, a staggering number. Other major speakers on the agenda through this weekend, include Newt Gingrich, Senator and Congressman Rand and Ron Paul; Congressmen Paul Ryan and Allen West (West is a black Republican just elected to a Florida district in the recent anti-Obama landslide), Senators Lee, McConnell, and Thune; Governors Daniels, Barbour (both formerly Reagan White House officials) and Perry; and my buddy Herman Cain, former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza and a former Federal Reserveofficial, among many others.

Much of the conference will be available on the CSPAN channels. Speeches will also be available in real time at the CPAC website,… Read More