In June of 2003, I held a town hall meeting in San Diego County, and, at the end of the meeting, a park ranger from Anza-Borrego Desert State Park came up to me and delivered an ominous warning. “I don’t know when,” he said, “but we will have a horrible fire here in San Diego County soon. The environmentalists in charge of our state parks are not removing the fuel, the underbrush, the weeds and the dead trees. When they catch fire, it will destroy a lot of land and a lot of homes.” He explained that, in the past, state park land management practices actually managed the land to minimize the danger to people and to nature. Fires happen, he said, but if the worst fuel dangers are removed before the fire, extinguishing it with minimal damage to humans is possible. He said, however, that state policies, adopted at the behest of enviro nuts (my words, not his), who believed in the policy of “letting nature take its course,” were putting lives and property at risk. Three months later, his predictions came true, and the “worst fires in the history of the state” destroyed homes and lives all throughout Southern… Read More

Here we go again. Huge “unexpected” California brush fires destroying hundreds of homes — not to mention lives lost. After the conflagration subsides, publicity-seeking politicians will overrun the area, consoling disconsolate homeowners — great photo ops. These political opportunists will then demonstrate their generosity by doling out OPM to victims, taking credit for the “charity” they provide.

And then, after a couple months of this posturing, no significant preventative measures will be adopted — even LOW COST non-coercive preventative measures.And yes, there ARE some cost-effective reforms that could be adopted that likely would save many and perhaps most of the houses now burning to the ground.

I’ve been writing about such reforms since the 2003 San Diego fire destroyed 330 homes in my Scripps Ranch subdivision. Indeed, I did a paid, five part, pro-con op-ed debate series with a big government advocate in theLos Angeles Times. It’s no longer available on their website, but fortunately I saved the entire debate in a blog article I did. The wisdom I imparted then… Read More

In a previous column, I wrote that the most important issue of this election is what happened to General Flynn with out-of-control government abuse. If Trump is not reelected the culprits will get away with it. Yet that is not the grinding issue of this election. It is the onslaught attempting to dismantle the First Amendment and now the Fourth Amendment being pushed by the Left. Unless the rest of America stands up here and now, we will have irreversible damage.

Republicans tend to focus on the Second Amendment (with justifiable reason) since the Left has attempted to take guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens. Totalitarians take the guns out of the hands of their citizens; then when they strip rights away from the citizens, they cannot defend themselves. Follow the patterns of Erdogan in Turkey and Chavez/Maduro in Venezuela. These were wonderful countries until these despots systemically destroyed them and the rights of the citizens. The arguments for gun control are often insipid as the gun violence almost universally is done by people who illegally obtain guns. That will not be eliminated by new gun restrictions.

As important as that issue is, the… Read More

I knew the Arrogant Lazy Authoritarians would take over. I wrote about it 4 years ago. I just thought it would take a little longer. Start with a fake health crisis, a Legislature dominated by ALAs bought off by government unions, a state of sheeple, and boom! the state has already started down the road to tyranny. The Arrogant Lazy Authoritarians (ALAs) have taken over.

Let’s begin with banning the Republican Party. In the last days of session, the Senate Pro Tem literally banned Republicans from the Capitol. The excuse was a quarantine, because one Senator tested positive for corona virus and attended a Senate caucus with other Republicans, but there is no Constitutional basis for prohibiting, for emergency purposes or otherwise, a member of the Legislature from meaningful participation in the Legislative process. No testing, no evidence that anyone else in the caucus was infected, no evidence that no one got close enough to him to be infected, just a ban on attendance. It didn’t take much to suppress opposition. What will be the next emergency? Given the tenuous evidence used to justify massive government intrusion on people’s freedom using… Read More

Over the past few weeks, California small business owners such as myself have worked diligently to ensure a safe reopening and to make sure we do everything we can to keep employees and customers healthy.

This concern – combined with the fact that we’re operating during an economic recession – is a lot for business owners to handle. What’s worse, on top of this pandemic, we’re now facing the threat of coronavirus-related lawsuits. A threat that has the potential to shut all of us down for good.

What is a coronavirus-related lawsuit? The nature of COVID-19 makes it impossible to know for sure where or when someone contracted the virus. Trial lawyers are taking advantage of this. They’ll file a suit claiming an employee or customer contracted the coronavirus while on the business’s property, therefore making that business owner liable. And while it’s impossible to prove where someone contracted COVID-19, it’s also impossible to disprove. Therefore, even if a business owner has taken all of the necessary safety precautions, these baseless lawsuits will still go to court where it will take up everyone’s time and money and will likely end in the… Read More

There is one person more than anyone else who could have stopped the violence that has spread from city to city in America. These cities clearly have one thing in common. It is not their population of Black people or any actions that may have occurred there. It is the fact they are run by liberal — if not Left-wing — Democrats who hate Trump. The person who is the head of their party could have ended this. Joe Biden.

Someone might argue that Donald Trump is President and he should have stopped it. He tried. He offered the mayors and governors of all these cities and states federal help. He was turned down. He had to send federal officers to Portland to defend federal buildings from being destroyed because of either ineffective or non-existent policing. The Leftists running the city and state chastised Trump and called our federal officers Stormtroopers. They called the people throwing Molotov cocktails at the building and rocks at our officers “protestors.” What was the mayor’s plan – to go out and “protest” with “his people” until they realized he was the Mayor and they turned on him?

By the time the incident in Minneapolis happened… Read More

One of the most important changes in California in the last couple years is the change of how independent contractors are treated and whether they should be W-2 employees. There is no doubt that some employers were abusing the law in California that aligned with the federal rules. The question is did we throw the baby out with the bathwater? And it is clear that was exactly what was done.

New rules were set in place by a California Supreme Court ruling in the Dynamex vs. Superior Court of Los Angeles. The ruling in short established that someone working for a company was an employee not an independent contractor. The burden of proof became the companies; they must show the person was not an employee.

Then the legislature drafted AB5 and the Governor signed this bill which codified the Supreme Court ruling with many exceptions for various different professions. A labor law mediator who is an expert on labor law in California stated that he believes the exceptions in the law has made AB5 problematic. There are more exemptions that were being put forward that are on hold because of the COVID situation. For example, the musicians were not considered in initial… Read More

As everyone knows, buying a home in California is MUCH more expensive than buying a home in almost all the other states. Generally we compare states using the “median home value.” According to Zillow, the July 2020 median home value in the U.S. is $248,857. The CA median home value is $578,857. BTW, the median home value in my San Diego County is $628,519. https://www.zillow.com/san-diego-county-ca/home-values/