Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

As I suspected, the Presidential election is occupying much of the media attention now and much of the attention of members of Congress as well. Furthermore, the controlling Democrats are generally of the belief that their candidate (whoever that is) will win in November and then, if they hold Congress, they can do what they want without having to make deals with President Bush. So, I expect much action on things like energy, immigration, health care, etc to be held until at least after November and probably next year. There are a few things scheduled to expire this year, like farm subsidies, on which some action is expected. But, there is still no agreement in the House on the now expired Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which passed the Senate by a wide margin. So, even those items that are on a deadline of sorts don’t seem to be moving in this paralyzed Congress.

Federal Budget: One of the items that Congress is supposed to take up each year (but sometimes doesn’t) is a federal budget. By the Constitution, spending and tax bills must originate in the House. So, the House is beginning… Read More

Last night, the Anaheim City Council voted 3-2 to save Disney the trouble and expense of making it’s case to Anaheim voters and simply adopted the ballot-box zoning SOAR initiative as an ordinance.

From now on, lucky property owners within the Resort District will be governed by their own very special set of zoning rules. Unlike the ordinary joe who can seek a zoning change through the normal process via the Planning Commission and City Council, Resort District property owners seeking a zoning change will have to seek approval from a majority of a combined Planning Commission/City Council of 132,000 voters.

Anyone feeling adventurous enough to try it better have a big wallet and Disney on their side.

Just last week, it looked as though the SOAR initiative would actually have to be voted on by Anaheim. After all, wasn’t that what all the Disney/SOAR breast-beating last year about… Read More

The Democrat secret plan to solve the budget crisis has finally been revealed.

Yesterday, Senate Democrat Leader Don Perata spoke plainly when he was asked how they proposed to to make up the deficit when he said,"Raise taxes. That clear enough? Raise taxes." What a shocker….. the Democrats want to raise our taxes – I just can’t believe it.

Senator Perata also promised to hold us here all summer apparently until the Republican resolve not to raise taxesis broken. And I’m sure he means it. Remember our Senatesleep-over lastyear? (no worries – – we eventually were set free).

If last year’s Democrat rage at the Senate Republicans refusing to vote for a budgetuntil spending was reduced by just… Read More

What does one do when he is sitting in a foreign airport at 5 a.m. with nothing to do? Blog of course.

And how canone avoid blogging on the latest story from Don Perata, the Senate Democrat Leader, coming out of Sacramento? He has thrown the high, hanging fast ball to the Legislative Republicans. Now let’s see if they can hit it out of the park.

Apparently, yesterday, Senator Perata announced that he would hold up the entire legislative process, keep the legislators in session, until taxes were raised, basically saying that until 8 legislative Republicans (6 in the Assembly and two in the Senate) voted to raise taxes, he would not let the entire state legislature adjourn. This, in an election year. Oh please, Senator Perata, don’t do that to us, don’t throw us "wascawy" Republicans" into that briar patch. Please Senator Br’er Fox, we couldn’t take the pressure. We will feel unbelievably bad about sitting in Sacramento while story after story is written about how only Republicans are standing between the taxpayer and higher taxes in California. Of course, we promise, promise, promise never to mention… Read More

Having been rolled by the Governor for the past five years (a little less rolled in 2007 than in years past) the GOP minority in the State SenateandAssembly must now, finally, draw a line in the sand on State spending, which has exploded under this Governor and with a few Republican votes every year.

At risk here are losing the arguments on two key principles, the premise that we have a spending problem rather than a revenue problem, the historical fact that tax increases do not now, nor ever have, increased tax revenues.

There is also the issue that nobody in elected office, nor any candidate wants to touch – education spending. Somebody explain to me why a 100% run up in education spending over 10 years with less than 15% change in enrollment can’t be reduced in a fiscal crisis? Are there no intellectuals out there to make the argument.

This is a seminal time for the GOP. A depressed nationwide base looks at a feckless Congress, a lame duck President and a Governor who has place our State at great risk while flying the GOP flag. Its not a good situation, and taking a stand on the issue of taxes would be a great help.… Read More

Deep down everyone involved in politics knows that “campaign reform” has been a failure. More and More money comes in, but all these laws make it harder to find who is really giving to whom. At the state level, you can go to the Secretary of State Website and check out donors at the state level to the real big campaigns.

Local campaigns are a completely different story. It is hard to know about campaign donations without going to City Hall. Hard except in Pasadena , where The Foothill Cities Blog that covers the Foothill Cities in LA County. (Hence the clever name) has taken on campaign finance at the local level. In Pasadena the most prominent of the cities it covers … Read More

With his strong wins in Texas and Ohio, Rhode Island and Vermont, Senator McCain has earned the delegates to be our Republican standard bearer for President. Right now he is receiving the endorsement of President Bush, a true showing of Republican unity that will be critical this November. President Bush is in a jovial mood, talking about how they’ve campaigned against each other and with each other over the years and that he will be back in Crawford with his feet up, while John is inside [the Oval Office] making the tough decisions. He expressed great confidence in McCain’s ability to lead, and had a bit of fun with the press in the process.

My hats off to Senator McCain for hanging with it and picking himself up off the deck in the primary process and getting the job done. Although I was with another candidate until soon after the Super Tuesday primary results, Senator McCain has and will act with honoras Commander In Chief, a very important distinction between he and whoever is his November Democrat opponent will be…critical for the future direction of our country and it’s affairs such as:

-Seeing through and honoring the… Read More

You have to love the mindset of liberal Democrats like Don Perata, the outgoing State Senate President Pro-Tem. For years and years, they (Democrats) have overseen a huge expansion of the size and scope of state government spending, without regard for the inevitable result — that eventually the proverbial chickens would come home to roost and we would be left where we are right now — with current state spending vastly exceeding anticipated tax revenues. This situation that we are in, which is mostly the doing of Perata and his liberal Democrat colleagues (since it takes a 2/3 vote to pass a budget, Republicans to share some "partial credit" for our situation), is a horrible one. But it should be crystal clear that there is only one responsible course of action to an overspending problem, and that is to cut spending back to levels that the state can afford. Of course, being liberals, Perata and company can’t understand why we should simply saddle Californian’s with higher taxes so that we can "increase state revenue" to match our overspending. It must be so easy to be a liberal. After… Read More