To my fellow Republicans – happy 2019!

In the wake of November’s disastrous California election results, we clearly need to up our game if we are going to rebuild from here. Here are my resolutions for our leaders:

May our elected officials and candidates resolve to focus less on policy detail and more on the values behind – and the beneficiaries of – their policies. Too many CA voters believe that the GOP does not share their values or care about them. This is in part because Democrats, universities and the media feed them propaganda, but also in part because our standard bearers often don’t explain our values or talk about who will benefit. We can do better!

May our candidates in “Top Two” races resolve to be team players. Until we get rid of the Top Two voting system, the GOP simply cannot afford delusional, selfish behavior by our candidates.

In Assembly District 76 we lost a longtime Republican seat in 2018 because the June primary ballot had two Democrats and six Republicans. The two Democrats made the top two, assuring a Democratic victory in November. Republican Phil Graham came… Read More

I was going to end this series with a comment on problem Republicans face in this state that no one has addressed, and that is the donor dilemma. I will address that later. A story in the LA Times today, though, caught my eye, and I thought it worth commenting on as a part of this series. The Times studied the outcome of the races Republicans lost for Congress, and found as much as a 10% drop in Republican turnout in the key races throughout the state. In each election, the Dems turned out and voted in numbers equal to 2016. Republicans, however, simply didn’t show up. I believe there are two reasons for this. First, Donald Trump was not on the ballot. Throughout the country, I have talked to Republican activists who said Trump turned out people they had never seen at elections before. Second, there was a feeling throughout the country by those people that Congressional Republicans did not support Trump’s agenda. I’m glad we’re fighting about the wall now. That fight should have happened six months ago. It might have changed the outcome.

Why is that?

One of my rules of politics is that Republicans lose elections because they… Read More

Most people think of California as the most desirable state in the union. Naturally it’s assumed that there’s heavy migration into the Golden State, with the population growing at a robust clip. But for quite a number of years, that has not been the case.

At the bottom of this article are the just-released 50 states’ population figures for this past fiscal year in chart format. The states are listed in order from fastest to slowest growth. Remember that the population growth of a state is the net total change considering births, deaths, migration between states and international migration.

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2018/estimates-national-state.html

Yes, the California population IS growing. But in spite of our state’s wonderful physical attributes, the growth is subpar compared to the nation as a whole. In this latest 12 month period, the nation’s population grew 0.62%. California grew 0.40%. Stated differently, the country grew over 50% faster than California.… Read More

At CaliforniaGov. Jerry Brown’s “Exit Interview” Tuesday, the Sacramento Press Club auctioned off autographed souvenirs from his years in the Governor’s office, including cartoons of his budget press conference presentations of charts and graphs, Proposition 30 memorabilia increasing sales and income taxes, and graphs showing state government living within its means. Other charts showed record spending levels.

Gov. Jerry Brown is known for his infrequent and rather unscripted press conferences, often making glib remarks, or quoting Zen Buddhism, Latin theology, philosophy, and “ontology” – the nature of being. Tuesday Brown did not disappoint during his “Exit Interview,” as he prepares to leavethe Governor’s office for the last time on Jan. 7.

… Read More

In California, the Democrats’ Jihad against the rich is gaining momentum. In 2019 they will try (again) to pass a bill to in essenceban“venture capitalists, hedge funds and private equity firms” from the Golden State. If implemented, the plan will work all too well. Boy, will it ever!

What some Democrats have figured out is that if you don’t want something but can’t directly ban it, tax it out of existence. For instance, if you don’t like guns in private hands, tax the guns, tax the ammo, and require annual fees for even possessing such items. Make those costs high enough, and it will effectively ban most guns in California — except for the rich. Most LEGAL guns, that is.

Intentional or not, that’s apparently what Democrat legislators will try to accomplish in 2019. Their 2018 bill (AB-2731) failed to pass. The bill would have levied a breathtaking ADDITIONAL 17% state individual… Read More

Last month I wrote about reports that McKesson, California’s second largestcorporation(after Apple), might be planning to move its HQ out of San Francisco. After the company initially denied such stories, the firm has now confirmed their planned HQ move to Texas. https://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/news/2018/11/30/mckesson-relocates-headquarters-to-north-texas.html?

One factor seems to be that the company’s top dogs are tired of paying a (now nondeductible) 13.3% California state income tax. Of course, Texas has no state income tax.

Would that this move was a “man bits dog” story. It’s not. It’s more of the same. And it’s getting worse.

The “Business Relocation Coach” tracks these California business moves, and just updated the figures. The survey found… Read More

I am a conservative. I believe in conservative principles, and have spent my time in politics fighting for those principles. Less Taxes–I worked to lower the car tax in 1998, and helped keep it low throughout my remaining time in the Legislature. Safe neighborhoods–I helped pass Three Strikes in 1994 (the right three strikes, not the watered down one that is now in effect). At each turn, through legislation and political activity, I spent my effort pushing the conservative agenda. Even in the party fights, I fought for conservatives to run the party. I sat in the meetings when we conservatives planned the strategies to keep the Republican Party in conservative hands.

And we conservatives blew it. We mishandled the party, its operations, its money, its organization, and we have reaped the results of our actions in the losses that have occurred.

Don’t get me wrong. The party’s principles shouldn’t change. We must focus on freedom, family, free enterprise and strong communities. That being said, we conservatives spent so much time trying to maintain philosophical purity that we forgot that the purpose of the party is strengthen… Read More

Los Angeles attorney Eric Early, working with a group of Santa Barbara parents and teachers over anti-Caucasian, anti-male, anti-Christian and ‘Unconscious Bias’ curriculum, filed a complaint complaintMonday evening in the United States District Court for the Central District of California on behalf ofFair Education Santa Barbaraagainst the Santa Barbara Unified School District andJUST CommunitiesCentral Coast.

In an interview, Early said they brought suit against the “anti-Caucasian, anti-Christian organization calling itself, Just Communities Central Coast, Inc. (“JCCC”), and its’ willing enabler, SBUSD,” because Defendants have employed and continue to employ policies and procedures for teaching SBUSD’s teachers and students that unlawfully discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex and religion.

From the lawsuit, Early includes the following chart, one of many examples, copied directly from… Read More