The US Fish and Wildlife Service recently double-crossed the National Shooting Sports Foundation, as well as voters. Following a Freedom of Information Act public records request to the Fish and Wildlife agency, the shooting sports foundation obtained emails that prove the federal agency withheld pertinent, official data in its annual report on the California Condor’s lead blood levels, until well after the California state legislature passed a law in 2013 to ban all lead ammunition.

The annual update, which had been previously issued annually every June, found little change in the condor’s blood lead levels. TheCalifornia state legislatureacted, despite previous data, at the insistence of animal activists groups, led by the Humane Society, which have long said the California condor is poisoned by lead shot. I’ve been following… Read More

California, the state obsessed with being first at everything, is aiming to add another first to its record books — Not content to be the first state in the country to tax the air we breathe, California will be the first in the nation to impose a cap and trade tax on transportation fuels.

In response, Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, and Sen. Andy Vidak, R-Hanford, and more than 20 other Republican lawmakers, announced Monday, the introduction of theAffordable Gas for California Families Act,legislation to exempt transportation fuels and natural gas from the California Air Resource Board’scap-and-trade program.

The move afoot by the radical left to strip Americans of their cars under the guise of environmentalism, knows no bounds.

With the second highest gas taxes in the country, and a flailing cap and trade program, whose only trading partner is Quebec,California is already paying the price.

While the rest of the country is currently enjoying lower gas prices, Californians will be faced with a hefty new… Read More

We’ve all heard about the 6-states initiative, and the State of Jefferson secession proposal, however, there are really two Californias:

There is the liberal elite state, run by the environmental oligarchy, which makes our political policy; and There is everyone else – the upper working middle class, the very middle class, the working class, the working poor, and those living in abject poverty.

Santa Barbara County is a microcosm of the two Californias –

the North County, which is primarily working class and relatively poor, with a large Hispanic population; and the South County, which is relatively wealthy, white, with high-paying white collar, jobs, high tech jobs, and academia.

As if the divide isn’t enough already, Measure P, put on the ballot bythe Water GuardiansofSanta Barbara County, is masquerading as a ban on hydraulic fracturing, while the initiative would actually result in shutting down the onshore oil and gas industry in Santa Barbara County, according to COLAB President Andy Caldwell.… Read More

On the eve of the United Nations climate summit summitthis week, Gov.Jerry Brownsigned six bills to make California the biggest electric vehicle market in the nation. Brown’s goal is to have 1.5 million zero-emission cars on the road by 2025.

The new laws expand the number of clean air vehicles with access to carpool and toll lanes from 55,000 to 70,000, regardless of how many occupants ride in the vehicles.

However, what Brown did not focus on are the electric car subsidies being extended to low income residents, under the administration of the Air Resources Board.Criticsof the increasingly subsidized green political movement say this is simply more taxpayer funded… Read More

By Tom Tanton and Jean Pagnone

When California makes the news, it is typically an example of what not to do. It is a state with high unemployment, out of control spending, and high taxes. Therefore it should be no surprise that California is in the news again thanks to California Air Resources Board and AB32, the Global Warming Solutions Act.

Additional revelations about ‘scientists’ fudging underlying data have surfaced and advocates for the poor are awakening to the economic devastation wrought by CARB’s implementation. Now CARB has issued a legislatively required update to its ‘scoping plan.’ Discussions have reignited about the need, the mechanism and the overall benefits of this bureaucratic attempt to do something about the weather. Most significant perhaps is the application of cap and trade rules to transportation fuels which are scheduled to go into effect January 2015. This new, permanent hidden gas tax created by CARB and implemented without legislative approval will likely cost Californians 15 cents to over a dollar more per gallon of gas, with that amount continuing to increase. That adds up to $3 to $9 billion dollars taken out of… Read More

Nearly every news outlet in California has been gleefully reporting that the state economy is bouncing back. While recent newsreports show unemployment has slightly dropped, the facts show otherwise — particularly telling is how the Legislature is so focused on increasing the minimum wage, rather than improving the business climate.

Unemployment in the state, and across the country, is worse than is being reported. And, it is far more complicated than a slight economic uptick, or slight “drop” in unemployment.

We’re creating jobs at a slower pace now than at the same time last year. And with the supposed drop in unemployment, the underemployed and those “no longer in the labor force” are issues rarely reported. There is no coincidence between… Read More

Part ll in a two part series. Part l can be found here.

Last week I wrote about a recent Senate Budget Committee cap and trade hearing and the billions of dollars expected to be generated by the Air Resource Board’s cap and trade auctions.

One of the issued I posed was the original purpose of passage of AB 32, the legislation under which the cap and trade hearings are conducted.AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, established the goal of reducing… Read More

Ethics, even in politics, is based on adherence to moral principles. Honesty, integrity, loyalty, fairness, respect for others, lawfulness, pursuit of excellence and accountability, are principles.

G. K. Chesterton explained why: “Morality is always terribly complicated – to a man who has lost all his principles.”

The fundamental purpose of the American project was and still is individual freedom.

While many American freedoms have been eroded, we still hold the sanctity of the individual sacred in America. Americans believe that man is inherently free, whether a gift from God, or a fact of nature.

However, with freedoms and individual liberties increasingly plundered, many ask what the proper role of government is, as well as the proper role of the politician.

Especially in California, suffering under the cloud of recent scandals in the… Read More