Greg Pettis is a city council member in Cathedral City (Riverside County, Palm Springs area) and he is running for the State Assembly in the 80th Assembly District. Greg is a nice guy, but classically liberal. He is in a battle with at least four other Democrats for the nomination and there there are two GOP candidates battling it out to eventually succeed Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia.

I am not sure of Pettis’ chances but I did get a fund raising letter from him recently.

His letter touches on the usual ‘I got money for parks’, ‘I got money for sewers’. But my favorite part is when he proclaims having "…stood up to Wal-Mart’s unfair labor practices."

I understand why many Democrats hate Wal-Mart. They see economics as a zero-sum game where Wal-Mart gets richer and the rest of us get poorer. I am not saying that is Greg Pettis’ position, he is a businessman.

But no matter his motivation, I don’t think that the most likely donors to a campaign for State Assembly would respond well to any anti-Wal-Mart message.

Greg, for the… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We try NOT to reprint press releases in this space verbatim, but since I am post from my vacation, I hope that FR readers will be forgiving. This is exciting news, and I am pleased that many are already registering online for Western CPAC. If you haven’t signed up yet, there’s no time like now! – Flash] Senator Tom McClintock named Co-Chairman of Conservative Conference One of California’s most respected and admired state legislators–California State Senator Tom McClintock (R-19th District)–has been named a co-chairman of the Western Conservative Political Action Conference.

“Tom McClintock is the most highly-regarded statewide conservative leader since Ronald Reagan was Governor,” said James… Read More

The story behind Senator Carole Migden’s accident last week is getting more interesting. The Chronicle and KTVU are reporting that Migden may have had an additional accident before rear-ending a Honda sedan on Hwy 12 in Solano County.

Migden says that she only took her eyes off the road to reach for her cell phone, but witnesses say otherwise.

From the KTVU story:

But about a half dozen motorists had called 911 before the crash as Migden traveled more than 30 miles on Interstate 80, heading east… Read More

What a great partner I have found inthe National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT), a non-partisan group dedicated to the protection of children from abuse, exploitation, and neglect. I want you to know about them and I want you to get involved.

I got to know PROTECT almost four years ago when they sponsored my SB 33 – the bill that successfully closedthe incest loophole in California. Up until that point in California, if you sexually molested a child under 16 years of age, you went to prison for 6 to 16 years. UNLESS the child was your own, or your stepchild, or even if you had a"famial" relationship – THEN you couldget probation, and even were reunified with your victim (meaning daddy came home to molest again). An insane law if there ever was one.

Incidentally, the original, terrible, law was signed by then Governor Jerry Brown

PROTECT has turned its sights on child pornography, a genuine human rights crisis that has profound… Read More

What a great partner I have found inthe National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT), a non-partisan group dedicated to the protection of children from abuse, exploitation, and neglect. I want you to know about them and I want you to get involved.

I got to know PROTECT almost four years ago when they sponsored my SB 33 – the bill that successfully closedthe incest loophole in California. Up until that point in California, if you sexually molested a child under 16 years of age, you went to prison for 6 to 16 years. UNLESS the child was your own, or your stepchild, or even if you had a"famial" relationship – THEN you couldget probation, and even were reunified with your victim (meaning daddy came home to molest again). An insane law if there ever was one.

Incidentally, the original, terrible, law was signed by then Governor Jerry Brown

**There is more – click… Read More

California Liberals like to think themselves as selfless compassionate souls concerned for their fellows. No matter that they hide in Beverly Hills and Malibu escaping Section 8 Housing, their kids go to elite private schools that poor folks cannot afford, but of course they give. Don’t they?

Well the sociological evidence showsthey don’t. Professor Arthur Brooks, once a well meaning liberal himself , exhaustively researched donor trends In America and discovered the more religious the person the more generous they were giving to charity.Since more conservatives are more religious the givers are overwhelmingly to the right.. "Who Really Cares" 2006, Basic Books.

Last night at the Beverly Hills Hotel is a case in point. At its annual fundraiser, the Midnight Mission featured the Hearts of Gold banquet. The Midnight Mission was founded in 1914 to care, feed, house and offer rebuilding opportunities for drunks, drug addicts and the self imposed underclass in LA’s skid row. Seldom receiving government money, Midnight Mission is considered one of the most efficient and effective charities in LA.

We who co-hosted the… Read More

Margaret Thatcher once said, “Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are…you’re not.”

This weekend Speaker Pelosi was in Pleasant Hill at a fundraiser for Rep. George Miller, D-Martinez. She touted the failed efforts of the Democratic majority to move the Commander-in-Chief on timetables in Iraq, even offering to take their domestic pork barrel spending out of the bill to woo him. Alas, to no avail.

She praised newly-elected Congressman McNerney as “Congress’ only mathematician and wind energy expert.’ Scary that there is only one “mathematician” working on our federal budget, and as far as being a wind energy expert, McNerney isn’t the only one who keeps the hot air balloon around the Capitol fully inflated. Funny thing is, McNerney seems to have figured out that he won’t win re-election by placating the left wing radicals who got him into office. He’s been distancing himself from a number of far left initiatives lately, and looks to be positioning himself… Read More

Someday Arnold Schwarzenegger will not be Governor anymore, but the impact of his “He-man” assualt on the alleged human-created component of some sort of warming trend on the planet will define his legacy. Of that I am sure that there is probably agreement between the Governor and this humble website publisher.

But the legacy that the Governor will, in fact, leave behind will be one of costly regulation and resource scarcity that will make it much harder to afford to be a Californian in the next generation than it is to be one now (if you can believe that).

I could start rattling off ill-advised policy goals and actions that will lead to this outcome, but for this post, I will highlight the Governor’s decision to reject the application of BHP-Billiton’s Liquified Natural Gas Facility many miles off the Malibu coastline.

The reality is that with the growth in population in California, sustainable energy sources are essential. Without new ones, that scarcity I mention above will raise prices for…everything. And guess what, it will hit those least able to afford it the most!

I know that the BHP proposal would… Read More