Free Republic

Politicians like Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom blame global warming and President Donald Trump for California’s woes. Yet Newsom has cautiously moved to mitigate some of his state’s past policy missteps by increasing efforts to clear forests of fuel and allowing some natural gas power plants to remain open for a few more years to reduce the threat of blackouts caused by an overreliance on unreliable wind and solar power. Giving policymakers the benefit of the doubt—that they didn’t intend to promote policies that resulted in burned towns, scores of deaths, and widespread power outages—how did they arrive at this point?...

A recent United Nations report blasting President Trump and America in general for harboring “contempt” and “hatred for the poor” is based on highly inaccurate data that can’t easily be used to compare the U.S. to other nations. The U.N. report’s main contentions read like an attack on the Trump administration by the Democratic Party: America has 40 million poor people, including 18.5 million who live in extreme poverty; U.S. policies regarding the poor are “cruel and inhuman;” the Trump tax cuts aren’t working and will worsen inequality; and the U.S. needs to spend less on defense of our nation...

We endorsed Chuck DeVore in the GOP California Senate primary over Carly Fiorina. We did so because of DeVore’s proven record of staunch conservatism — which he continues fighting for now, having just helped kill a California open-carry ban — but also because we didn’t really trust or know anything about Fiorina. Carly’s conservative record was thin to nonexistent, and there were many troubling signs that she held liberal views. From her praise of Jesse Jackson, to her playing the race and gender cards against DeVore, to her support for the Wall Street bailouts, to her qualified support for the...

(snip) ...in 2009, when unemployment hit a 70-year high for the state, the California State University-Sacramento study came out. DeVore said the study laid out how California’s energy policy led to the highest gasoline tax and the costliest electricity in the country. No wonder, he said, that “people will move out of California and go to Texas.” DeVore said even Canadians have figured out how to profit off the state’s regulatory culture. “California imports a lot of electricity, but it has to be green,” said DeVore. “BC Power, in British Columbia, which got caught manipulating energy costs in 2001, exports...

One in five Americans calls California or Texas home. The two most populous states have a lot in common: a long coast, a sunny climate, a diverse population, plenty of oil in the ground, and Mexico to the south. Where they diverge is in their governance. For six years ending in 2010, I represented almost 500,000 people in California’s legislature. I was vice chairman of the Assembly Committee on Revenue and Taxation and served on the Budget Committee. I was even a lieutenant colonel in the state’s National Guard. Before serving in Sacramento, I worked as an executive in California’s...

Former GOP Assemblyman and U.S. Senate hopeful Chuck DeVore has given up his Orange County supervisor bid to move his family to Texas. DeVore has accepted a new job as a visiting scholar at the nonprofit Texas Public Policy Foundation, where he will write a book on "the Texas Model of how low taxes and low government spending, a light and predictable regulatory environment, respect for property rights, and a business-friendly legal climate has turned Texas into America's jobs generating dynamo."

Good-bye, California, I'm going to Texas It’s hard to say “good-bye” – perhaps “au revoir” is better (till we meet again). As some of my friends know, our family has been caring for my aged in-laws, 86 and 82. As with many people who have seen a full life of war and work and raising a family, they need our help. This assistance has consumed our whole family – in fact, it’s the toughest thing – and the most important thing – we’ve done, even more so than running for statewide office. In addition, as with many in the Golden...

A series of messages forwarded to The Daily Caller show a top aide to former Alaska Gov. and possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin mocking top political figures and even her boss’s own daughter, Bristol Palin. RedState.com founder and CNN contributor Erick Erickson is “a total douchebag,” wrote Palin speechwriter and domestic policy adviser Rebecca Mansour in a May 22, 2010, message. “Greasy dumb ass with a talent for self-promotion. He threw himself in at the Gov’s SC rally. Self-promotion.” (Erickson said South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley invited him to the rally). Mitt Romney supporters are “wacky as hell,” Mansour wrote,...

California U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein recently criticized the intelligence community for failing to anticipate Egypt's political upheaval -- but looks like the CIA types should have been reading Chuck DeVore. That's right: the California GOP former U.S. Senate candidate published an analysis back in January warning Egypt was on "the brink of a chaotic transition of power" -- weeks before anyone had even taken to the streets of Cairo. The former Irvine Assemblyman raised his concerns on the issue of Egypt's future in a Jan. 11 piece in Investors' Business Daily entitled "A Restive Egypt Faces Succession; Islamacists May Make...

California’s progressive-era experiment in direct democracy was supposed to elevate the voters above the special interests, allowing voters make law themselves through the statewide initiative process. That this process is now virtually owned by the special interests is yet another example of the immutable Law of Unintended Consequences in government. A brief perusal of the California Secretary of State’s initiative campaign finance disclosure website shows that some $120 million dollars has been raised by 53 groups supporting or opposing California’s nine November ballot initiatives. By comparison, California’s two major candidates for governor have raised or given to their campaigns $176...

Proposition 19: NO – Marijuana legalization My biggest concern with this initiative, aside from the basic policy considerations, are two large unintended consequences: 1) will drug abuse grow, thus putting more of a strain on our out-of-control welfare system; 2) the impact of lawsuits on employers seeking to enforce a zero-tolerance policy (especially important in the defense industry). Proposition 20: YES – Redistricting reform extended to Congress Prop. 20 will make the independent State Commission on Redistricting re-draw Congressional Districts in 2011, instead of the legislature working with liberal interests, just as the independent commission will re-draw Legislative district boundaries...

California GOP Senate nominee Carly Fiorina is skipping a chance to appear with Sarah Palin at a major Republican National Committee fundraiser so she can campaign with Sen. John McCain instead. Fiorina has not yet announced the Saturday campaign appearances with McCain, but a campaign source tells POLITICO that she will be spending her time on the stump with the 2008 GOP presidential nominee rather than his running mate, the former Alaska governor. POLITICO reported last week that both Fiorina and GOP gubernatorial Meg Whitman would be skipping the RNC fundraiser in Anaheim, citing scheduling conflicts. The RNC is heavily...

I’ve poked around the California Senate race for the last several days, in preparation for a piece in the forthcoming National Review. And I discovered, or relearned, something I thought was kind of interesting. You know how many of our band blasted Palin for anointing Christine O’Donnell in the Delaware Senate race, disregarding viability (or so it appeared)? Well, you recall that the GOP Senate primary in California featured three contestants: Carly Fiorina (the ex-CEO and eventual winner), Tom Campbell (the former congressman who is a moderate, basically), and Chuck DeVore (the assemblyman who is a true-blue, four-square conservative). Palin...

Jerry Brown Doesn't Like My Language Written by Melanie Morgan    Thursday, 19 August 2010 14:11 Well, too damn bad.I don't like wealthy liberals mingling with people who support terrorists and give money to people who murder U.S. troops in Iraq.I am seriously pissed.Here is SF Chronicle's Joe Garofoli on the controversy. "...We're a bit dizzy here as we're entered Bizarro Bay Area World with word of not one, but TWO conservative protests of Democratic AG/guv candidate Jerry Brown.First, one happened outside Brown's Attorney General's office in Oakland Thursday morning, organized by the California Republican Party. Yes, a street...

Compare the high-debt states to the states shown in blue that voted for Obama—the linkage between debt and voting behavior is visually clear. According to Moody’s, the average state per capita debt of the 28 Obama states is $1,728 while the average debt in the 22 McCain states is less than half, at $749. This information alone says a lot about voters and their attitude towards government and debt.

SACRAMENTO — Sen. Barbara Boxer's popularity with Californians is falling as she finds herself in a statistical tie with her Republican challenger, former Hewlett-Packard Co. chief executive Carly Fiorina, according to a Field Poll released Thursday. The survey found 47 percent of likely voters support Boxer while 44 percent back Fiorina, a gap that is within the poll's margin of error. The result is similar to the last Field Poll, taken in March. That survey showed Boxer with 45 percent support, compared with 44 percent for Fiorina. Meanwhile, the senator's popularity has fallen. Just 41 percent of voters say they...

With the election season more than halfway over, the "tea party" movement has notched some impressive victories but also learned a hard lesson: There are limits to the power of its anger-fueled insurgency. The movement scored a big win this week in South Carolina, where state Rep. Nikki Haley romped past a four-term congressman to win the GOP nomination for governor. Still, for all the attention the tea party movement has gotten and all the passion of its followers, a rough accounting at the ballot box shows the movement has just about as many losses as victories. Money has proved...

At the election night party of "tea party" favorite Chuck DeVore in Tustin, Carole Mullner and her daughter Stephanie Perez were among the first to arrive. Outfitted in red T-shirts branding them as "insurgents" for DeVore, they enjoyed a rare moment of calm after months of campaigning for the Republican Senate candidate. Mullner, an artist and member of the West Covina Tea Partiers, set aside her work in January to hunt down volunteers and raise money as DeVore's "ambassador" for the cities along the 210 Freeway. Perez, a 31-year-old member of the Chino Hills Tea Party, served in that same...

Sarah Palin endorsed Carly Fiorina over Chuck DeVore in California, and Terry Branstad over Bob Vander Plaat in the Iowa governor's race. In doing so, she rebuffed standard "tea party" picks for candidates who were more mainstream. As usual, the mainstream media has found a way to criticize these choices. With a few surprising endorsements in recent Republican primaries, the self-styled rogue of GOP politics has reaped an angry response from some of her own supporters and a fresh round of speculation about her own presidential ambitions in 2012. ...Shelby Blakely, executive director of the Tea Party Patriots' online publication,...

Some of Sarah Palin’s riskiest endorsements scored major victories Tuesday for the former Alaska governor, showing off her power in Republican primaries. Palin had four primary endorsements in play – Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Terry Branstad and Cecile Bledsoe – and three won or moved on to a runoff. Palin served different roles for each candidate – sometimes spotlighting conservatives not well known to the national scene while at others validating conservative credentials to an unsure grassroots and even stepping in to deflect nasty attacks. Perhaps Palin’s most powerful demonstration came in South Carolina, where her endorsement propelled a major...