There is a report in the Sacramento Bee today that Art Torres, Chair of the California Democratic Party, is claiming that the "California Counts" initiative, which would reform California’s apportionment of electoral college votes to recognize regional diversity and make our state relevant again in Presidential elections, is unconstitutional. That position is a bunch of baloney.

Long established U.S. Supreme Court case law (see Smiley v. Holm, 285 U.S. 355 (1931) and Davis v. Hildebrant, 241 U.S. 565 (1911) ) provide strong logic and support for the initiative. Those cases establish rock-solid support for the proposition that the word "legislature" in Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution, dealing with apportionment of Congressional districts for election purposes, includes the lawmaking process in the state as determined by its particular "polity." In these cases, "legislature" in Article 1 was interpreted to include not only the state legislature itself, but the full lawmaking process, including the Governor’s veto, and the people’s power of referendum.

In… Read More

We’ve all been reading about the negative impacts all around the United States as a tremendous number of people are going into default on their sub-prime home loans, and they say that the situation is likely to get worse. Millions of American families seem to have overextended themselves, getting into interest-only variable rate loans that are now coming back to bite them as their short-term low rate is now adjusting to a higher one. Clearly many of these folks taking out these sub=prime loans were the victims of predatory lending practices by the "used car salesman" class of mortgage brokers, and many others still are regreting their efforts to ‘game the system’ as rates go up. California being the largest state in the nation, we are the most-impacted by this situation.

Believe it or not, some are advocating a taxpayer bailout for all of these subprime lending companies, and for those who took risks on this loans. Of course, such a bailouot would mean that all Americans are paying the price for the imprudent decisions made by some. Completely unfair.

Assemblyman Chuck DeVore recently published a column in the Orange County… Read More

It would seem that the more that a microscope is applied to the dealings of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, the more it shows a pattern — that absolute power does corrupt absolutely. One can probably figure that at some point Nunez was, well, like the rest of us. You know, work hard and don’t take anything for granted? But at some point, or maybe slowly over time, the big gavel of being the Assembly Speaker has gone to the man’s head.

CHARITY-GATE Just after weeks of articles and investigative reports into the lavish and expensive expenditures from Nunez’ campaign coffers that appear to be supporting a lifestyle otherwise unattainable for a public servant, now the Los Angeles Times has revealed a startling and disturbing pattern… Read More

The San Gabriel Valley Tribune’s Editorial page, like that of most newspapers,is normallya veryreliable source ofleft-wing drivel.

So imagine my shock at this – they’ve endorsed FR’s own Mike Spence’s re-election for West Covina School Board. I guess it’s true what they say about broken clocks — or in this case, lefty rags — even they can be right once per election.

Read what they have to say:

A good team for W. Covina schools LIKE the Beatles sang, West Covina schools are "getting better all the time." A lot better.

The school board’s relentless focus on academic performance and safety have produced huge improvements in student reading, writing, math and science scores. In the last five years, eight West Covina schools were named "California Distinguished Schools" (including West… Read More

It would seem that the more that a microscope is applied to the dealings of Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, the more it shows a pattern — that absolute power does corrupt absolutely. One can probably figure that at some point Nunez was, well, like the rest of us. You know, work hard and don’t take anything for granted? But at some point, or maybe slowly over time, the big gavel of being the Assembly Speaker has gone to the man’s head.

CHARITY-GATE Just after weeks of articles and investigative reports into the lavish and expensive expenditures from Nunez’ campaign coffers that appear to be supporting a lifestyle otherwise unattainable for a public servant, now the Los Angeles Times has revealed a startling and disturbing pattern… Read More

First off – a big Thank You to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Yesterday I posted about my real concerns in receiving a grade of "B" from their legislative report card and I included a letter I had sent Jon Coupal. (you can read it a few posts below this one – just scroll down)

They responded immediately and are going to put an asterisk by my grade on their website and provide a more detailed explanation as to how excused absences can effect a legislator’s grade (in my case adversely – but I actually think it improved a couple of Democrats’ scores). They are also going to explain this in their upcomingnewsletter.

Today, Cal-Tax – another fine organization committed to protecting the taxpayer – gave me a perfect 100% on their legislative vote record.

I don’t normally use this space to crow about rankings I receive from interest groups, but as much as I was concerned yesterday about HJTA’s low ranking of me – because they counted votes I missed due to illness and recovering from surgery… Read More

A couple legislative races in California appear to be over before the filing deadline. On the other side of the aisle they have a couple races that fall into this category.

One of them is San Francisco County Supervisor Tom Ammiano. At the last reporting period he had $151,067 in the bank and most every major endorsement in the city he could want.

He is the only candidate to file a statement of intent to tun for the seat. The people in San Francisco tell me that some groups would like to find someone to run against him but they realize that it is a losing cause in the end.

This guy is the classic urban liberal that is active in every major issue in his city. With the voting history of this part of the state he is actually a good it for the district. Senator Migden and Assemblyman Leno don’t seem to agree on much lately — except that Ammiano should be in the Assembly.

You may not know him now but you will when he… Read More

Steve Maviglio, spokeshole for CA Assembly Speaker Fabian “Louis Vuitton” Nunez, must be auditioning for a new job. He knows his boss’ career is dying with Prop 93’s February defeat, which is why he unleashed this attack on the California Nurses Association for contributing to my wife’s campaign. Once again, Democrats attack hardworking, middle-class Californians and demonstrate how out-of-touch they are with their own union constituency. (You can read Jon’s excellent commentary this morning for the complete rundown on Nunez’s problems.)

Nunez is targeting the California Nurses Association because they had the audacity to question the Speaker’s rich and famous lifestyle paid for with their campaign contributions. Last month, the LA Times (hardly a member of the vast right-wing conspiracy), uncovered that Nunez was scamming campaign contributions from union members to pay for his… Read More