Shortly after I was born, my father retired from the Air-force, he served 20 years as a fighter pilot, including a number of tours in the Vietnam war. Unlike my older siblings, I never experienced the fear of my dad not returning or the horror of a friend’s dad becoming a prisoner of war.

I guess it was a curiosity for what this must have felt like that drove me to read the pale blue book on my parents bookshelf at an early age. They Wouldn’t Let us Die, was written in 1973 by war critic Stephen A. Rowan, who set out to tell the story of the prisoners of the Vietnam War. My parents had the book because the best man at their wedding, Bob Craner was profiled in the book (to this day my dad has yet to read the book) and lived 18 inches and a wall away from John McCain for more than 2 years.

It was this book that introduced John McCain’s story to me, more than 25 years ago and personalizes his presidential campaign for me today.

McCain wasn’t your… Read More

The size of California State government is ENORMOUS. All of the debate that we hear about is focused directly on the 100 BILLION++ general fund of the state budget. But if you want to look at the big picture, you need to add to this number TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS in additional state spending that is not included in this discussion – in “special funds” where funds come in from taxes that are not called taxes (they call them by a pseudonym, “fees” and say they take only a majority, not a 2/3 vote to enact) and these taxes go to specific programs, and then they are “moved off-budget” into this other (ignored in the current debate) corner, out of sight. Let us also not forget the BILLIONS OF BILLIONS of already authorized bonded indebtedness that occurred and will continue to occur, without so much as another vote of the people (or in the case of those scandalous “prison bonds” – without a vote of the people). All of this adds up to just a VAST and MASSIVE amount of money that California taxpayers, present and future are going to be coercively paying (or in the case… Read More

The size of California State government is ENORMOUS. All of the debate that we hear about is focused directly on the 100 BILLION++ general fund of the state budget. But if you want to look at the big picture, you need to add to this number TENS OF BILLIONS in additional state spending that is not included in this discussion – in “special funds” where funds come in from taxes that are not called taxes (they call them by a pseudonym, “fees” and say they take only a majority, not a 2/3 vote to enact) and these taxes go to specific programs, and then they are “moved off-budget” into this other (ignored in the current debate) corner, out of sight. Let us also not forget the BILLIONS OF BILLIONS of already authorized bonded indebtedness that occurred and will continue to occur, without so much as another vote of the people (or in the case of those scandalous “prison bonds” – without a vote of the people). All of this adds up to just a VAST and MASSIVE amount of money that California taxpayers, present and future are going to be coercively paying (or in the case of the… Read More

DeMaio Council Bid Has the Unions a Tad Scared… Never repeat the negative, they say. But, I can’t pass up the efforts to which some will go in attempts to kill the San Diego City Council candidacy of government watchdog Carl DeMaio. To many, he would be the Tom McClintock of the San Diego City Council. To some, that is good, to others, well…they just can’t stomach someone on the council that is willing to stand up so honestly and strongly to the back-scratching foolishness, complete failure of fiduciary duty and outrageous lack of concern for our tax monies that caused the city’s fiscal mess in the first place.

An anti-Carl website was launched last week, which I would ignore if it weren’t so amusingly inept. Perhaps the best way to cover the "effort" is to repeat San Diego Tax Fighters Chairman Richard Rider’s reaction:

If you want to see just how much Carl DeMaio scares the crap out of the labor unions (both public and private labor unions), go to this amazing, LITERALLY slimy… Read More

Today we are pleased to present a Guest Commentary from Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association…

Ordinary Citizens Are Slaves to Their Public Masters By Jon Coupal

Had a raise in pay lately? For many Californians the answer is "no." Their major concern in these uncertain economic times is just hanging on to their jobs.

However, when it comes to pay increases, some of our citizens are faring much better than others. These are workers employed by the state of… Read More

Today we are pleased to present a Guest Commentary from Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association…

Ordinary Citizens Are Slaves to Their Public Masters By Jon Coupal

Had a raise in pay lately? For many Californians the answer is "no." Their major concern in these uncertain economic times is just hanging on to their jobs.

**There is more – click the link**

View Full Commentary… Read More

I got Boom! for Christmas. I resisted reading it for three months until I finally gave in a couple weeks ago. It was worth it because it is not like other books that I have read on the sixties.

In other books on the decade like "Reunion: A Memoir" by Tom Hayden or "Sixties: Years of Hope and Days of Rage" by Todd Gitlin you get a very different view of the time. From those book the reader would believe that Tom Hayden and his student protester buddies defined the entire decade. After reading Brokaw’s more than 600 page review of the era and some of the impact it is having on the present day it is clear to me that Hayden over time will be viewed as an interesting historical footnote and nothing else. Brokaw makes only three minor mentions of Hayden in the entire book.

Boom! defines the sixties as the period of time that spans from the assassination of President Kennedy in November of 1963 until the resignation of President Nixon in August of 1974. The book does give great importance to the roll of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement in setting the stage in the time prior to the August 1863 March on… Read More

How long does it take to figure out that something is not going to work? It took the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) seven years and $10 million to abandon plans to automate the way it grants permits to truckers carrying oversized loads on California roads and highways. The Sacramento Bee (March 2nd) has reported that the latest software failure has become “a long and puzzling line of computer contract failures in California government …. [State government] has repeatedly spent millions of dollars on projects that were ill-designed or mismanaged or simply collapsed under the weight of their own complexity.” Caltrans officials decided the agency needed a computerized system when an investigation revealed a Caltrans employee had given a truck driver with an oversized load a permit and bad directions, causing the truck to crash into an … Read More