Thedoomsday predictions of global-warming alarmists would have us believe there are more droughts, more extreme hurricanes and tornados, that arctic snow caps are melting, and all coastal cities are in danger of rising seas.

Convinced the sky is falling, Henny Penny and a band of gullible friends march off to tell the king, only to meet their end at the hands of a wily fox.”Thesky is falling!” Henny Penny said, in a silly tale about a chicken who believes the world is coming to an end.

Does this sound familiar? The defacto leader of “The Sky is Falling” Chicken Little Party, Gov. Jerry Brown warned in 2016,“If Trump turns off the satellites, California will launch its own damn satellite,” after he called Trump a“fraud” at the Democratic National Convention for his continued denial of global warming.

When President Donald Trump pulled the… Read More

Most countries around the world think that it’s a good thing to have cheap energy.But in California, we have plenty of cheap energy available, just not the political will to access it.

California depends on natural gas-driven turbines and hydroelectric generators to provide just 38 percent of its oil needs. The state imports 12 percent of its oil from Alaska, and another 50 percent from foreign nations, relying heavily on Canada.

So why are California’s utilities warning of potential rolling blackouts again?

It’s political. And it’s corrupt.

Highest Electricity Rates = Less Power in CA

California’s natural gas shale formation… Read More

Episode V – Housing: For those of you who perhaps are new “subscribers” to this “Report from my Laptop to Yours”, I have been writing a series on the things I think we need to do in order to bring about a new, extended period of substantial growth that offers prosperity to our people, refreshes our culture and preserves and extends our hegemony in world affairs. This is Episode V. (You see how I cleverly use roman numerals in order to add a degree of erudition to these writings. My close proximity to the ways of Hollywood has not been completely without influence.) If you missed the first four Episodes, you can find them on my website HERE.

Now on to Episode 5…..I mean V. Regular readers of this missive will know that restoring growth to the housing market is one of my major priorities in Congress. This is not because I’m a housing guy. I’m not really. I’m a car guy. But, the fact is that the car business and the housing business have some similarities. Both are high… Read More

Fix It: Episode III – The episodic thing makes me feel like I am writing the next Harry Potter or something. OK, enough fantasizing. On to the real stuff.

Energy: The “fix” for our energy problems is actually one of the simpler ones. And, the reason it is simple is not because of any action of Congress or the President. It is not even because of our founding fathers. It comes from God.

This country is blessed with enormous natural resources. We have more coal than any other country on earth. We can make electricity from coal. We also have enough natural gas, by some estimates, to last us for a century. We make electricity from natural gas. We have a number of nuclear plants that generate electricity and we can build more. And, we have rivers to create hydroelectric power which can be harnessed to create more power should we need it. I have just described four sources that currently create more than 90% of all the electricity in this country. And, we can expand them all if we want or need to without importing anything from any other country.

But, you say, you haven’t mentioned anything about our… Read More

In the second “episode” of our saga on fixing our problems and bringing America a new period of growth and optimism, I will address an issue that none of you will be surprised to see me tackle – the debt and deficit. Since I was first elected to the California State Assembly in 2000, trying to get government to tax, spend and waste less has been a major priority for me. As such, you have heard a lot from me on this issue. So, I will not repeat much of what I have said incessantly for years so that I don’t become electronic Ambien for you.

Instead, let me put this problem/opportunity in the context of the larger issue we are talking about. Implementing a plan to gradually fix our deficits and reduce our debt is a necessary but not sufficient condition for growth. Fixing the deficit will not in and of itself free the economy for sustained prosperity. There are other things we have to do that I will write about in future episodes. Suffice it to say, fixing the deficit is not a sufficient condition. But, it is a necessary one. If we don’t do it, we will certainly bring on a crisis which will plunge us into a long and… Read More

There are a lot of things messed up in America today. On this, there is pretty much universal agreement. We have no energy policy, no manufacturing policy and an antiquated tax code that is complicated and inefficient. We are facing crushing deficits and debt that will soon lead to a European-style collapse. The economy continues to be weak and fewer people are working today than over 3 years ago when Barack Obama was sworn in as president. So many people have become discouraged that the number of people working or trying to find work is the lowest percentage of the eligible workforce since back in the Jimmy Carter recession days. The critical housing market is stuck, gas prices are high and going higher and the costs of our health care system keep rising and reform is needed. The public’s confidence in Congress and the President is low, perhaps even at an all-time low, and there is little trust out there for major institutions, be they public or private. We are mired in a seemingly endless conflict in Afghanistan even as we face new and changing threats all around the world.

Makes you want to fill your bathtub with beer and go drown in… Read More

Things are not so good out there. The unemployment rate, already stubbornly high, climbed even higher in May. Economists are revising economic growth predictions downward. Housing prices continue to drop, thereby further reducing household wealth. Real returns on bank deposits and Treasury Bills are negative. The dollar is dropping. Gas prices are up, inflation is up. There are some bright spots, certainly, but the overall picture is that of stagnation. Unfortunately, none of this is a great surprise given what the government has been doing of late. We are printing money and artificially holding down interest rates to try and spur recovery. But, this is creating those negative real (after inflation) interest rates, which are distorting capital flows. Most of the country’s tax policies expire in 18 months, so no one can do any long-term investment planning about taxes with any certainty. The government is retarding the development of almost all forms of economical energy (oil, gas, coal, nuclear), while subsidizing expensive wind and solar. We continue to run record deficits, which divert capital from other more productive uses and create the massive public debt overhang… Read More