From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…… Read More

The front page of the Wall Street Journal today featured a great article exposing the hypocrisy of unions. The title says it all: “To Protest Hiring of Nonunion Help, Union Hires Nonunion Pickets.”

According to the story, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council of Carpenters is hiring people (who are neither carpenters or in unions) to protest against nonunion companies. The union’s excuse? They claim “it’s really difficult to have [union members] come out, either because of parking or something else.” Really? If finding parking is the biggest deterrent to protesting against companies using nonunion workers, then maybe it isn’t a big priority for union members—just their power-greedy leadership.

Even better, the union asserts it’s helping the unemployed by paying nonunion picketers. I’m sure President Obama would approve of this job growth calculation.

California unions and interest groups are also participating in the rent-a-mob hypocrisy. “In California, one group is offering to pay $10 and up per hour to… Read More

When liberal State Senate President Darrell Steinberg announced that creating a new State Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes, staffing it up with lefty ex-newspaper reporters, and then dispatching them to do their thing, looking at whatever they want, it is of course no surprise that they are not using this as an opportunity to look at how state government is functioning internally, but rather to determine if state government is adequately (to their mind) is doing a good job at being a regulator of business.

In this case, a column from David Lazurus (who if he is not a charter member of the ACLU, it is not out of lack of desire) highlights a report due out from the "Ex-Reporters On The Taxpayer Dole Blasting Private Companies" Commission today that, in essence, takes on the Public Utilities Commission for not being strict enough on telecom companies like Verizon and AT&T.

It is significant to note that their main beef with the PUC is that over the last few years, the aforementioned companies have not lost market share.… Read More

Given that incumbent State Treasurer (and former Attorney General and Senate President Pro-Tem) Bill Lockyer has been a "high profile" public official for decades… It will come as sobering news to him that nearly half of all California voters have no idea who he is…

This will be especially troubling news to Lockyer because of two very important additional factors — the first is that 2010 is shaping up, nationally, to be a good year for Republicans, the second is that thanks to a VERY competitive race for Governor and a GOP nominee in Meg Whitman who is bringing record resources to bear, the GOP ticket this year in California specifically will be strong.

Enter into the equation State Senator Mimi Walters. Walters is known for being a smart, tenacious candidate who will be campaigning all around the state as the GOP’s nominee for Treasurer.

The Walters campaign recently tagged some questions into a statewide survey from respected public opinion polling firm Public Opinion Strategies. Here are some interesting data points that Walters’ consultant, Dave Gilliard, culled from the survey (taken July 11-14, 800 likely… Read More

Today was the second of my weekly appearances on Sacramento conservative talk radio station KTKZ, spending a segment with popular radio talk show host and FR friend Eric Hogue (his columns on his Hogue News website are linked often on our site’s main page — very insightful).

You can listen to the audio of my interview with Eric below — our topics? The State Budget crisis – specifically Schwarzenegger vs. Chiang, remembering Senator Dave Cox, and how the tax increase issue will dominate the GOP race to succeed him…… Read More

The LA Weekly blog is reporting the Center for Governmental Studies just issued a report showing the LA City Council votes unanimously 99.993% of the time. That’s an astounding statistic. I can’t think of any other major voting body with that kind of voting record.

Some could argue that LA politicians have figured out how to get along and therefore vote consistently. But one look at LA’s $485 million deficit and anyone could tell that if every council member for a city as large as Los Angeles is voting in one accord, they are probably not representing the best interests of their constituents.

Back in 2005 the legislature passed and the Governor signed AB 1179, legislation by ultra-liberal Democrat Leland Yee. This terrible piece of “nanny-statist” legislation presumed to once again assert state government in the role of parenting our children, in this case regulating the sale of violent video games to people under 18. Completely ignoring the fact that there is an existing rating system for video games that works well, the legislature and, ironically, Governor Schwarzenegger, supported this bad bill.

Fortunately, this particular advance of big government was thwarted by numerous California courts, included a unanimous rejection by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is significant to note that this brings to an even dozen the number of similar laws around the country that have been declared unconstitutional. In the case of AB 1179, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to review the decision of the Court of Appeals.

Never before have U.S.courts used expressions of violence as the basis for a restriction on our Constitutional rights to free speech. You may not like certain video games, but do you really want the government to tell… Read More

Back in 2005 the legislature passed and the Governor signed AB 1179, legislation by ultra-liberal Democrat Leland Yee. This terrible piece of “nanny-statist” legislation presumed to once again assert state government in the role of parenting our children, in this case regulating the sale of violent video games to people under 18. Completely ignoring the fact that there is an existing rating system for video games that works well, the legislature and, ironically, Governor Schwarzenegger, supported this bad bill.

Fortunately, this particular advance of big government was thwarted by numerous California courts, included a unanimous rejection by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. It is significant to note that this brings to an even dozen the number of similar laws around the country that have been declared unconstitutional. In the case of AB 1179, the United States Supreme Court has agreed to review the decision of the Court of Appeals.

Never before have U.S.courts used expressions of violence as the basis for a restriction on our Constitutional rights to free speech. You may not like certain video games, but do you really want the government to tell… Read More