I thought a long time before I wrote this. You see, I want Riverside County to be 100% Republican again, and if the Democrats in office in my home county vote for the transportation tax, it will go a long way towards achieving that goal. Western Riverside County voters have bore the brunt of the failed transportation policies began by Jerry Brown in the 1970s, and the tax increase Jerry Brown is requesting now can be traced directly back to the bad decisions he and the Democrats made in those years.

Between 1958 and 1974, the state of California built a transportation system that was the envy of the entire world. In that 16 year period, the thousands of miles of freeway system that is in place now was built. Jerry Brown took office in 1974, and set in motion a set of policies that has destroyed that system, and made California’s freeway system a national joke. Today, it takes 25 years of study to build one mile of freeway. The state of California pays thousands of people to sit around and think about building a freeway, that is, they issue study after study, but they never actually build anything.

In 1990, then Governor Deukmejian cut a deal with the… Read More

California State Senators Janet Nguyen and Andy Vidak and staff members arrived to work at their Capitol offices one morning last week to find unlocked office doors, a pungent chemical smell, and discovered their carpets had been cleaned without prior notice or even authorization. What’s the big deal? Were the offices infiltrated Watergate-style?

No one in the Senate administrative offices authorized or ordered the cleaning, or knew anything about it. Nguyen’s carpet was just spot cleaned last… Read More

Democrats in the Senate Monday appeared to be headed for a very public brawl with the Trump administration over passage ofSB 54,by Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), promoting unlawfulsanctuary city policies for criminal illegal aliens. SB 54would prohibit local police departments and sheriffs’ deputies from assisting Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and enforcing federal immigration laws.

Democrats need to rest and drink plenty of fluids because they have a serious case of “I Hate Trump” Fever.According to the Mayo Clinic, afever is a sign of illness. However, ifthe fever is accompanied by a severe headache, stiff neck, and shortness of breath, a doctor should begin treatment.The Democrat-controlled California Senate exhibited all of these signs Monday while debating why California should become a sanctuary state to offer protections for criminal illegal aliensfrom local law… Read More

It’s easy to spend money when it’s not your own. That’s the case with the proposed massive tax hikes on California drivers announced Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

The $5.2 billion in taxes imposed annually are aimed squarely at the middle class — citizens who see their cars not as a luxury but as a necessity to get to work, take the kids to school and run their errands at the end of a long day. The governor and his tax-and-spend allies — including interests that get rich off the taxpayer dime — are pushing a gas tax hike of 12 cents per gallon on top of our already high gas tax plus higher vehicle registration fees that average out to about $50 per vehicle. This would leave California with the highest gas and car taxes in the nation by far.

Not surprisingly, taxpayers are not buying what the governor is selling. A Public Policy Institute of California poll shows that a majority of Californians, including 42 percent of Democrats, oppose the taxes. A recent California Chamber of Commerce poll showed that 80 percent of voters want to see spending reforms first, before new taxes.

Read the entire… Read More

California’s promise of opportunity for everyone has been all but eradicated by gross political mismanagement, political corruption, and watered down representation. It’s time to drain the swamp in California politics.

While California voters overwhelmingly supported Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, when polled, Californians show strong signs of wanting political reform in the Golden State.

They may get their wish if John Cox has anything to say.

Cox, who is running for Governor, and is the author of the… Read More

What’s wrong with this picture? California has the sixth largest economy in the world, but our highway system ranks 42th out of 50th states per the Reason Foundation’s most recent Annual Highway Report. That does not make any sense.

Along the lines of things that do not make any sense, the California Democrats have rolled out their new transportation package. The plan seeks to raise fuel taxes and user fees for motorists. But it doesn’t stop there. It also calls for a new tax based on a vehicle’s value and a new tax on zero-emission vehicles.

This is wrong and I will not support such a plan.

Furthermore, the hard-working taxpayers of our state should not shoulder the cost of this plan’s reckless and irresponsible spending increase. They have suffered enough.

The Golden State already has the nation’s highest sales and personal income tax, and the nation’s fifth highest gas tax. This plan would just be another burden to our working families and make living and doing business in California increasingly more difficult.

The California Department of Transportation spends roughly $10 billion on transportation-related expenditures. So… Read More

SB 2 (Atkins) hurts families struggling to maintain homeownership, places a significant financial burden on middle-class Californians and weakens the integrity of the land records system – one of the mainstays of our free enterprise economy.

Since 1850, California’s County Recorders have managed and protected the integrity of land records while preserving and defending public access to the information in their care. County Recorders collect a nominal fee on every document recorded to cover the direct cost of providing this valuable service.

SB 2… Read More

What is it with progressive politicians who believe that taxpayers won’t change their behavior because of tax policy? One would think that repeatedly seeing pie-in-the-sky revenue projections from big tax hikes that fall way short of reality would be a wake-up call.

In trying to project the impact of tax hikes on government revenues, the failure to account for predictable changes in behavior is called “static scoring.” And since many progressives mindlessly hew to this method of analysis, let’s call it “static cling.”

Static scoring is different from “dynamic scoring.” Dynamic scoring simply means taking into account predictable changes in behavior that result from tax increases (or tax cuts) to accurately project the amount of money that will be raised.

To read the entire column, please click here.… Read More