The troubling trend towards mono-political news viewpoints is a well funded project. Activist groups masquerading as news outlets have very clear agendas, and big budgets. Any actual journalism happening along the way appears to be more of a byproduct by well-meaning employees.

Many of these groups focus on environmental, economic, and “social justice” issues, and receive commensurate, sizable grants.

Former McClatchy journalist David Westphal posed the question of who will pay for the news with so many newspapers shrinking, in a 2009 story. Westphal suggested “non-news organizations”, trade associations, businesses, governments and labor unions, should step up with funding. “At the recentHarvard session on new business models for news,I offered an off-the-beaten-path idea to the question of who will pay for the news,”Westphal said. “One… Read More

By Tom Tanton and Katy Grimes

Many in America have grown convinced the world would become Utopia if it wasn’t for evil, dirty oil.Ironically, these oil critics are alwayssuccessful beneficiaries of the U.S. free enterprise system. When theydemonize oil profits,they show just how misinformed they are.

The relationship between oil and gas, and humans, is inextricably linked. As a nation’s economy grows, its oil consumption naturally follows suit.

Would America be a better place without the “Big Oil” and gas industry? Or is the vehemence behind demonizing oil and gas just a ploy for extracting exorbitant and punitive taxes? The… Read More

Much is written daily about the turmoil throughout the United States, and wars around the world. When the headlines of these stories are put together, the story is diabolical and dangerous; it would appear the U.S. has made a Faustian bargain, and is even under siege – from within.

Each of these stories individually delves into the horrors taking place somewhere in the U.S. or on foreign soil. The list of news headlines from the last two days, none of which were in my local newspaper, tells… Read More

A landmark ruling Tuesday by Los Angeles County Superior Court JudgeRolf M. Treu found the two-year teacher tenure rule in California, unconstitutional.

The plaintiffs in the Vergara vs. the State of California case, nine California public school children,argued they were directly harmed and deprived of a quality of education by the state statute that forces schools and districts to pink-slip good teachers, and retain ineffective teachers, because of tenure.

But most telling in Treu’s ruling was his outing of the teacher tenure rules — a practice which could only be describes as “stacking the deck.”

Treu found that new… Read More

First-time political candidate Vanila Singh was inspired to run for Congress out of concern about the direction of the country. Singh is running for the congressional seat in California’s 17th congressional district, located in the South San Francisco Bay Area, and the heart of Silicon Valley.

While many political candidates say they are concerned about the direction of the country, Singh is different.

After spending a year as a medical intern at Yale New Haven hospital, Vanila was drawn to acute care medicine. She moved to New York City and completed her residency in Anesthesiology at Cornell Medical Center.

Currently a Professor and Physician at Stanford University, Singh was doing her residency in New York City on September 11, 2001 when the twin towers were bombed by terrorists. Singh spent days treating… Read More

I told you in my last missive that I would next write you about income inequality. I pulled an Obama…..and lied. I will get to the income inequality issue in a future edition. But, I’m taking an operational pause in my “Farewell Series” to address a couple of important issues that bubbled up last week in Washington on which I feel compelled to opine. So, here are my thoughts on two current hot topics:

NSA/ FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act): Last Thursday, the USA Freedom Act, a bill to reform some of the now well-known practices the NSA has employed to intercept our personal communications, passed the House by a vote of 303-121. I was one of the 51 Republicans and 70 Democrats voting against this bill. This is one of those times when people on the right and people on the left unite to stop what we believe to be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy. However, in my view, those in the middle have proven to be somewhat less passionate about this duty. Don’t get me wrong, this bill is better than current law. But, it does not stop the practices of the NSA in question and does not limit future action to what I… Read More

Last week, we discussed the “Second War Between the States”. Without question, this is a war of laws and policies. However, it is much more than that. It is a war over culture.

I am a big culture guy. I think it is the most important factor in predicting the success or failure or any association of human beings. Understanding the culture of a family will tell you much more about that family than will their address, income or the cars they drive. The culture in a company or a non-profit is tremendously influential on how they operate and whether you would want to associate with them or not. We have all probably worked somewhere or at least interviewed somewhere where the company culture was not a fit and we knew it was not a good place for us.

Countries and states have cultures, too. We certainly have long had a very strong and recognizable American culture. The American culture is not English culture or French culture or Mexican culture or Japanese culture. It is uniquely American. And, within our culture, many different “dialects” can be found across the country. But, just like English spoken in Alabama is still closer to English spoken in the… 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