This time of year is always interesting in Sacramento. The California State Department of Finance (DOF) is about to release its “May Revise” of the State Budget for the 2025-26 fiscal year. In the budget process, the May Revise is the last piece of information necessary for legislative approval of the budget. The DOF issues its report, usually around May 10, then the Legislative Analyst Office (LAO) issues its analysis of the May Revise, then the Legislature enters the final lap of approving the budget.

Up to this point, the DOF issued its January budget, and the LAO analyzed that document, and the Budget Committees in both houses of the Legislature have broken out into their subcommittees, and each subcommittee has studied the line items in their policy area of the budget, and approved or disapproved the “budget change proposals” (BCPs) from the various departments of the state government. The BCP is the request from the various departments for money in the next year’s budget. It is important to note that the budget subcommittees do not review the entire budget from the departments, only the BCPs. If the subcommittees in the two… Read More

President Trump’s working with Elon Musk, a very wealthy business leader and CEO of a few major businesses he created, has been front and center in the news for a few months now. This is not the first time that one of our Presidents cast their fate with a major business leader. This is all laid out in Tevi Troy’s delightful new book, The Power and the Money. Troy, a presidential historian, has written four previous books and decided this time to take a unique view of the Presidency. He looks at the past 27 Presidents beginning with U.S. Grant and the major business leaders with whom they have interacted. There are legendary names such as Ford, Rockefeller, and J.P. Morgan. There are more modern names such as Jack Welch, Warren Buffet, and Lee Iacocca. There are the current leaders such as Musk, Gates, Cook, and Zuckerberg. This is not dry material. It is filled with fascinating stories of interactions between Presidents and people who provided them unique advice regarding the economy at the time. My favorite story is about the indomitable Lyndon Johnson and Hollywood legend Lew Wasserman. LBJ began to rely on Wasserman for advice and wanted access to him at… Read More

Over the last several weeks, we have seen the Democrats in Sacramento flail away at trying to fix California. Whether it is the rampant crime, particularly in our large urban centers, or homelessness, which seems to be pervasive, some rational Democrats come up with solutions, only to be overwhelmed in their own caucuses in the Legislature. The Democrats in the California Legislature are owned by the interest groups that make money from government, whether its the enviros who use the regulatory system to extort money from anyone who needs a government permit to do business or “progressive” criminal activists who have some sort of Victor Hugo-type Les Miserables belief that criminals engage in criminal behavior because they need food, and not because they are bad people. The last two or three weeks in the Legislature have shown how broken the Democrat majority in the Legislature really is.

The first thing to understand about legislative politics are that the committees in the Legislature exist to protect the interest groups that fund and support the majority from government policies that are good for the public, but bad for the pocketbook of these… Read More

I am on vacation lying at the pool. I usually do not take much “beach” reading with me. This time no Connelly or Coben or Silva. A couple books to review that friends wrote, The Road to Serfdom (yes, I was shocked I had not read it), a Peter Drucker Book and a couple of lengthy biographies. Not your typical pool reading. Likewise included was the latest book by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch. I want to share a story in his book Over Ruled. He tells the story of Marty Hahne who at a young age became addicted to Houdini and decided to become a magician. As is typical with someone who does magic tricks, he had a rabbit; the first being Charlie then Casey. Everything was hopping along until 2005 when a woman with a badge approached Marty after a children’s show at a library in Missouri. She asked to see his license. Stunned, he said what license? “For your rabbit.” Marty stated, “I could understand if I was using a tiger, but I was using a bunny rabbit. A three-pound bunny rabbit.” The woman worked for the U.S. Dept of Agriculture. Congress had previously passed a law that people using animals for research must have a license.… Read More

In the latest chapter of Sacramento’s ongoing effort to chip away at local governance, Senator Tom Umberg’s SB 249 proposes to override county-level decision-making by mandating that all county boards of education elections be held during the statewide general election in November of even-numbered years. While this might sound like a harmless administrative adjustment, it is a brazen overreach that sacrifices both fiscal responsibility and the principle of local control.

SB 249 affects five California counties—Orange, Riverside, Sacramento, San Joaquin, and Alameda—by stripping them of their authority to determine how and when to conduct their board of education elections. All five currently have the power to modify their election timelines through their county boards of supervisors. Yet instead of allowing these counties to continue making informed, localized decisions, Sacramento politicians are once again pushing a top-down, one-size-fits-all mandate.

This is not the state’s first attempt to meddle in this arena. It’s the third attempt in as many years. SB 286 (2022) and SB 907 (2023), aimed at Orange County alone, were defeated—one in… Read More

I’m playing around with Substack. I’m going to be putting some content over there. Including a post I just put up: Five Reasons The Founders Included the Second Amendment Check it out. If you want to be notified when I post on Substack, just subscribe (there’s a button on the Substack post). It’s free.… Read More

There is a major discussion circling around us about the masses of illegal aliens who entered this country while Joe Biden was President. It is akin to what occurred when Angela Merkel opened the floodgates to people entering her country. Once in Germany, they then spread across the rest of Europe causing tremendous havoc for the native populations. The question is what is our responsibility in removing these people from our country? A lot of people have been barking about “due process.” They may be correct, but why are they considered by some to be correct? What rights should people have if they enter the country illegally, not following the proper procedures? Vice-President Vance has taken the following position: “Biden overwhelmed the system with illegal migration. Is your proposed solution to give a jury trial to all 20 million illegal aliens (more if you count those already here)? I am sick of abstract arguments. What your proposal does, whether you know it or not, is ratify the presence of millions of illegal aliens in our country. I reject that.” Not everyone agrees with that position. Andrew McCarthy writes regarding the current cause… Read More

California drivers know the sting of filling up at the pump, where prices often hover $1.50 to $2 above the national average—$4.65 per gallon versus $3.15 nationally as of April 2025. While crude oil and refining costs play a role, the real culprit behind these sky-high prices is a web of state taxes, fees, and regulations that inflate costs far beyond what’s necessary. Add to that the elevated operational costs for gas stations in California’s pricey real estate and regulatory environment, and it’s clear why motorists are squeezed. Worse, the state’s aggressive climate policies, like cap-and-trade and low carbon fuel standards, promise global environmental gains but deliver negligible impact, raising questions about their prudence.

Let’s break down the numbers. According to the California Energy Commission, taxes and fees account for roughly $1.35 per gallon of gasoline in 2024. The state excise tax, the highest in the nation, stands at 59.6 cents per gallon, up from 27.8 cents in 2017, with annual increases tied to inflation. The federal excise tax adds 18.4 cents, unchanged since 1993. State and local sales taxes, averaging 2.25% but varying by region,… Read More