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30 years after his first landslide win, President Ronald Reagan remains an electrifying source of inspiration for many leading Republicans. Governor Mitt Romney often cited Reagan as a political hero, and a politician with the right idea. Reagan, a longtime California resident, Hollywood actor and California Governor, would eventually become the first and only Governor-turned American President from California. Today, under speculation that he is metaphorically suiting up for the 2012 president

A significant – and often overlooked -- result of what’s been dubbed the Great Recession is that in just over half of the 50 states, the programs that pay unemployment insurance to workers who’ve lost their jobs are insolvent, leading states to borrow more than $39 billion from the federal government to keep writing checks. California, which has the largest unemployment program in the country, has the dubious distinction of leading 34 other states and the Virgin Islands in borrowing:  $8.5 bil

Starbucks, replying to a petition from a gun control group, has said it will not ban the carry of handguns in its stores, if permitted by local law. The controversy ignited in Walnut Creek, CA when members of Bay Area Open Carry, a group advocating the legal carry of loaded handguns, began carrying open, unloaded handguns at Starbucks (which is generally legal under California law, with some exceptions.) The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence responded to this by starting a national campai

It was only a year ago that President Obama was inaugurated in what some commentators hailed as a sweeping endorsement of socialism: more European-style central economic planning, federal regulation, and entitlement programs. But it would seem that the pundits misread the Democrats' victories in 2006 and 2008.  America didn't want more, it wanted less. Americans wanted change, and change after eight years of George W. Bush did not mean more government spending or involvement in our lives. It me

According to various reports, Sarah Palin may be getting paid at least $75,000 to speak at the nation's first, official Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee.  If confirmed, such a development would fuel skeptics who have long criticized the motivation and make-up of the movement. While Palin's aides and conference organizers will not provide a response, Politico has uncovered documents which reveal that the former Alaska governor charges $100,000 per speech, with a $25,000 discount for

I’ve previously written that Schwarzenegger’s state failures on state parks, recycling, funding public education, opposing teachers, nurses and firefighters (not to mention his failures on abortion rights and early pandering to Big Pharma) indicated that he was a hard line Republican despite his periodic zags to the middle. Now, his defense of climate change against neo-crazy-con darling Sarah Palin has me scratching my head again. In the recent conflagration, Schwarzenegger made comments about

The Tea Party movement is at a crossroads.  It will either morph into a viable, third party by 2012, or it will fade away as most populist movements do.  It will either develop into a platform of credible fiscal conservatism and constitutional fidelity, or it will be co-opted by GOP bigwigs whose sole agenda lies in bashing President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Senator Reid. CNN ran a thought provoking article exploring the direction of the Tea Party movement.  There are growing concerns that th

California has once again become a Favored Nation in the eyes of Washington.  After eight years in the political doghouse, we have been returned to our national leadership position - at least as far as auto emissions standards are concerned. "For the first time in history, we have set in motion a national policy aimed at both increasing gas mileage and decreasing greenhouse gas pollution for all new trucks and cars sold in the United States of America," said President Obama, flanked by two gove

Heads of the Pacific Coast side of the Fishery Management Council decided on Wednesday, April 8 to basically call off this year's salmon fishing season, after fears that the King/Chinook salmon population may be undersized and may be threatened by the additional fishing season, after a smaller number of the Sacramento River and Klamath River Chinooks migrated to California and Oregon this year. (One way that Pacific Coast fishery authorities have tried to alleviate the situation in the past has

California felt about a 20 percent drop in exports through the month of February, which means that only a little over three-quarters of the amount of goods typically exported from California, were actually exported during the month of February. This isn't great news for the Golden State, which has also recently found itself in a more than $40 billion mess of a budget situation, using what can only be affectionately referred to as half-baked schemes, to get out of it. If California wants to get