⏱️ 6–7 min read

California families are struggling with skyrocketing prescription drug prices. Since 2017, prescription drug spending in our state-regulated health plans has increased by at least 56%—an increase of at least $5 billion. Depending on how you crunch the numbers, the real increase could be even higher. In 2022 alone, spending was $12.1 billion, up 12.3% from the year before. And it’s everyday Californians and their employers who are stuck footing the bill.

Instead of tackling the root problem, Sacramento has produced Senate Bill 41, written by Senator Scott Wiener and coauthored by fellow progressives in the Legislature. The bill is being pitched to voters as consumer protection, but in reality, it is a handout to the drug companies that dismantles cost-control tools and leaves patients paying the price.

The most telling endorsement isn’t coming from patients or small businesses. It’s coming from PhRMA, the D.C. lobbying arm of Big Pharma. If the very industry responsible for high drug prices is supporting your… Read More

Leftists Running a Supermarket Is Like Me Doing Ballet I always wanted to be a ballet dancer. Anybody who has ever met me takes one look at me and says, “give it up dude”. In the same regard I am telling the Left to give up their thoughts of running a supermarket. You don’t have a chance. The idea is being brought up in some cities for two reasons. There are in some areas of cities what have begun to be called food deserts. That means because of conditions created in the city by the people who operate the city, an area where all supermarkets have closed because the regional or national operators cannot make a go of it due to crime, danger to employees and city driven costs. The second reason is because of political rhetoric about the costs of things at a grocery store. Who isn’t devastated by the costs after four years of Biden driven inflation making prices on the shelf jump to extraordinary levels. I can think of three businesses of scale that take extraordinary skill to operate on a major scale. The first is an airline. The orchestration it takes to run a major airline is immense. To coordinate routes, airplanes, and personnel… Read More

The Democrats like to speak only of immigrants and never want to preface the word with “illegal” referring to those people who entered our country improperly. They like to brand Republicans as “immigrant haters“ because of their distaste for those who come improperly into the country, especially during the Biden Administration that flooded the country with people who had no legal right to be here. Recently, I was reminded of why we love immigrants who are here through the legal process. You may not know the name Leonard Chess. You certainly don’t know his given name Lejzor Szmuel Czyż. He came here with his family in 1928 and particularly with his brother, Phil, from Poland. As I said, you may not know them but believe me you do know them. They brought to the world some of the most famous names in music that led to the creation of a large portion of the music you listen to every day. The Chess brothers lived in Chicago and were supporting black artists when their music was still known as “race music.” They booked these artists at their club, the Macomba Lounge. They decided to invest in a small record label known as Aristocrat Records.… Read More

Act in haste, Repent at leisure.

Article XXI is the only provision of the California Constitution that addresses redistricting, and it clearly allows only one redistricting per decade. That has been in the California Constitution for over 100 years. It also has a number of substantive requirements that the recent Democrat initiative does not meet.

Yet despite this clear language, the Legislature and the Governor, when they enacted the redistricting scam this last month, did not suspend Art. XXI. ACA 8, the constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot, states “notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution…” or state law, their maps take effect. They suspended every other provision of the Constitution by their amendment, but they did not suspend Art. XXI, the only provision of the Constitution that addresses redistricting. If I had been their lawyer, I would have written “notwithstanding any section of this article or provision of this Constitution to the contrary…” to make it clear that Art. XXI was suspended. They didn’t, and they left a hole in their amendment a court could drive a truck… Read More

by Ron Nehring

Democrats often highlight the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the centerpiece of their party’s legacy on equality, pointing to its ban on discrimination in public accommodations, transportation, and employment. Yet nearly a century earlier, in 1875, it was Republicans who first wrote those protections into federal law. Passed in the face of unified Democratic opposition and signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil Rights Act of 1875 stood as one of the boldest assertions of equal rights in the nation’s history — until the Supreme Court struck it down eight years later.

The Republican Party was born in crisis, rising in direct response to the Kansas–Nebraska Act’s attempt to expand slavery and undo the Missouri Compromise. Within six years, this new party won the presidency, and Abraham Lincoln led the nation through the Civil War. Refusing to let the war’s sacrifice yield an ambiguous peace, Lincoln pushed hard for the Thirteenth Amendment, permanently abolishing slavery. He understood the Emancipation Proclamation needed constitutional bedrock, lest it be subject to being overturned by the… Read More

There was a firestorm in Washington when President Trump announced he sent Erica McEntarfer packing. Ms. McEntarfer was the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), a governmental entity about which Americans know little but happens to be critical to the U.S. economy. While the President muddled his reasons for the firing, it was done for two excellent reasons. This entity was created in 1884 and has evolved into its current home within the Department of Labor. It bills itself as “the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics and serves as a principal agency of the U.S. Federal Statistical System.” One might hope that it would provide solid economic information on which the government and our economic leaders can base their financial decisions. The BLS pours out many different reports. I know this as I receive them. The reports are about worker productivity, average weekly wages, regional hiring activity, national job openings, and many other topics. There is one report that is more important than the others combined. That is because the entire economy waits with bated… Read More

How quickly we forget. Between 1941 and 2001, Democrats controlled the redistricting process in the entire country (practically). And they gerrymandered (pronounced gary-mandered) everywhere. In 1991, Democrats controlled the Governorship and both houses of the Texas Legislature, but they were losing control of the state, as Republicans gained support, in fact, getting 47% of the statewide vote. The Democrat controlled state then enacted a congressional district plan that was called by the Supreme Court as the “shrewdest gerrymander of the 1990s.” It was so bad that in 2000, Republicans got 59% of the vote, but only 13 of the state’s Congressional seat. The Congressional seat fight in Texas continued in 2001, when the Democrats controlled the House, but the Republicans controlled the Governor and the Senate. Democrats still tried to protect their 1991 gerrymander by refusing to agree to a Congressional map in 2001.

Did we hear any Democrats cry about the gerrymandering process they perpetrated in Texas through 2001? No. In fact, between 1940 and 2000 the highly partisan maps drawn in the 25 to 30 states controlled by the Democrats were never… Read More

Redistricting is a purely political act. I know its boring, and very inside baseball, to talk about it, but jobs, power, influence and policy are all affected by how the political lines in any state are drawn. State legislatures were granted the power in Article 1, Section 4 of the US Constitution to draw Congressional lines, and, of course, most state Constitutions give them the right to draw state legislature lines. It is important to differentiate the power to draw state legislative districts and Congressional districts, because the Constitutional power to draw those lines are drawn from different sources.

With that introduction, let’s look at what California’s Arrogant Authoritarian in Charge (AAIC) Newsom is planning in the upcoming battle with regard to the redistricting of California Congressional lines.

First, we need to look at federal reapportionment laws. 2 USC Section 2a governs the “apportionment” process, that is, how the number of members of Congress are distributed between the states. Apportionment occurs once every ten years after the decennial census and that is when the states are allowed to draw the new… Read More