My friend Allen Hemphill dug this unnoticed factoid out of a recent economic comparison study by CNBC, the economics network of NBC.

Among other things, they rated states for “workforce quality.” Of the top 25 states, 22 were “right to work” states — ALL the 22 right-to-work states.

Unions won’t be citing THIS study!

http://usna1957.wordpress.com/2011/07/05/important-information-hidden-among-the-facts/… Read More

Recently there have been a spate of “studies,” press releases and articles from government apologists (especially CalPERS) about how we all prosper from (primarily government) pension fund investing and pensioners’ spending. Here’s my response:

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Actually, if the Crips and the Bloods had good PR departments, they could put out similar and equally accurate “analysis” and press releases:

The titles could read something like this:

“Crips’ Thefts Stimulate Economy.”

“Bloods’ Blood Money Energizes Commerce”

A thief who steals someone else’s money and spends (or, indeed, invests) the funds is doing just as much for the economy as the taxes confiscated (under threat of force) for the benefit of our public employee aristocracy.

It’s just another example of the “Broken Window Fallacy,” the ludicrous but too common premise that breaking windows increases prosperity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy

In this case, the assumption is that if I take… Read More

The switch of the SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE editorial slant from moderate Republican to moderate-to-liberal Democrat is finally becoming blatant and public. Today the U-T announced their “Community Editorial Board” made up of what they deem to be a cross-section of local leaders that will help guide the paper’s editorial page and indeed opine periodically. Oh my! http://tinyurl.com/3mp8tq8

Read the U-T write-up on this bunch http://www.signonsandiego.​com/news/2011/jul/24/voices-new-era-meet-community-e​ditorial-board/ and then ask yourself this question — how did they vote on San Diego’s Prop D, the benchmark 2010 city sales tax increase? Probably 80+% voted for it, compared to 62% of the REAL SD community who voted against it.

The new, underfunded, downtown library? Probably 90% of this board support it, while a strong majority of city residents oppose it — which is why the city council refused to let the citizenry vote on this modern day pyramid… Read More

Imagine a credit card, glossed and shiny, embossed with 16 digits and your name across the front; one linked to the benefit of a credit limit and a payment schedule for amounts owed. While this is a simplified illustration, for all intents and purposes, America has maxed out its own credit card and hit its legal credit limit. In the case of America’s credit limit, that amount is a staggering $14.3 trillion.

One might ask how we managed to max out the country’s credit card. We reached the limit because our government has been on a wild spending spree, recklessly handing out money for new government programs, unwilling to make the tough choices necessary to address out of control spending. Now, we have reached the debt limit and in order to avoid damaging the full faith and credit of the United States, the Congress must ensure any action taken to raise the debt limit comes with real and significant spending reform. According to a recent Gallup Poll and a recent CBS News poll, the majority of Americans do not support raising the debt limit, and this isn’t because they want us to default, but it is because they want Washington to stop the spending.

And… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: One would be hard pressed to find two constitutional and election law attorneys who are more well versed and well respected on the Republican side of the aisle than the co-authors of this important guest column. I commend you to take the time to full read this column, which is a bit longer than we normally feature in this space. But it is important — Flash] The Constitutional Role of Partisans in the Redistricting Process By Professor John C. Eastman and Charles H. Bell, Jr.

Summary: The Citizens Redistricting Commission process has gone seriously awry, hijacked by covert Democrat and leftist partisans who have violated open meeting, public records and conflict of interest laws, playing a “shell game” with draft district maps that likely will cement Democrat 2/3ds control of the State Legislature when finalized. Proposition 11 provided a remedy – Republican commissioners can defeat the final district maps if three Republican commissioners simply vote no. Then, redistricting… Read More

According to today’s Santa Barbara News-Press, Republican State Senator Sam Blakeslee lead a press conference on the Central Coast yesterday where he said from the podium he believes that a lawsuit filed by the liberal League of California Cities and the more liberal California Redevelopment Association to set aside the recent reform of California’s scam-ridden redevelopment agencies is “a valiant and heroic effort”. Blakeslee added at the press conference, “a team of us state senators worked really hard to save redevelopment agencies” but “each and every one of those overtures…were rejected and rejected categorically”.… Read More

The Family Action PAC is one of California’s most prominent conservative donor organizations. Founded years ago in Orange County as a ideologically conservative counter-point to the New Majority, the FAP has long worked hard to elect conservatives to office at the state and local levels.

FR readers know that during this latest state budget debate, there was a lot of controversy within GOP ranks over whether to support legislation that would abolish RDA’s — this legislation was tied to other legislation that would allow RDA’s to continue to exist if they paid money from their plush bank accounts into the state’s needy coffers.

It was clear to me and many other conservatives that any solid legislation that would impair, hamper, or abolish RDAs — is a welcome idea. As I have said, Redevelopment Agencies may have started with a good idea in mind, but they have become a good old boys network of redistributing money through taxes into local development projects, typically being awarded to friends and political contributors of local city council members (who conveniently are the members of the city redevelopment… Read More

So I had a chance once again to play around with iMovie on my Macbook Pro — and recorded a video commentary. I open by saying it’s about a minute long — not so true. It runs around four (very insightful) minutes in length… … Read More